


Alpha

by Vinnocent



Series: Wolfstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Animal Death, Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Gore, Color Blindness, Corpses, Emotional Constipation, Explicit Language, Guns, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Mind Control, Stabdads, Threats of Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a newly bitten beta werewolf discusses his options for three chapters before finally meeting the wrong alpha werewolf and then getting his dumb ass in trouble with the mob. Features a few scenes of mild violence, a dead animal, and awkward attempts at flirting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So originally, this was supposed to take place in Beacon Hills, in place of the original Teen Wolf plot, but my fiancee really wanted to see the two sets of characters interact, so Wolfstuck was moved to the neighboring fictional town of Fairvale, California. This probably won't be the last time that Teen Wolf characters appear, but it won't be common.
> 
> Also worth noting: Here the Teen Wolf characters are not from canon, but from an "everybody lives" AU. (Or, well, most people live.) That AU is specifically a spoiler-free version of [Ani-Wolf](http://ani-wolf.tumblr.com), but all you actually need to know is that Scott is currently leader of a pack containing Erica, Boyd, and Isaac.
> 
> Last note: The previous fic has now been edited slightly because John accidentally misstated his relationship to Jade. John, Jade, Jane, and Jake are all second-cousins to each other.

Bro stood from his seat on the bench outside the hospital morgue when he saw the figures headed toward him down the hall. One appeared to be a nurse he’d never met before, short and pale with a head full of perfect, dark, doll-like ringlets, and the other figure he was far too familiar with. Harley had reminded him six times before he’d left the station to remember to be professional, so he supposed he’d give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe the shock will give the old man a heart attack.

As they come upon him, he puts out his hand. “Stilinski,” he greets.

Beacon County sheriff Stilinski raised an eyebrow at the hand, but shook it nonetheless, his expression giving away confused amusement. “Strider,” he said. He released Bro’s hand and said, “This is Melissa McCall. She’s usually the nurse I consult with when the morgue attendants are busy or off duty.”

Bro looked down at the woman with a completely blank expression. “The morgue attendants are too busy to help the police?” he asked.

She shrugged. “The death was confirmed as an animal attack,” she said. Despite the casualness of her words and the shrugging, she seemed extremely uncomfortable, maybe even scared. “They don’t really bother for that anymore.”

“Anymore?” Bro repeated. “You get a lot of animal attacks resulting in death?”

Melissa shifted her weight and looked away. “There’s… an unfortunate frequency,” she said.

“You really think this is connected to a case of yours?” asked Stilinski. Bro noted how the question was meant to divert his attention away from the nurse.

Bro just shrugged, loose and casual with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. “Never know,” he said. “Two animal attacks within twenty-four hours of each other nearly equidistant from the county line, and the victims are siblings. Seems like a thing to double-check.” He nodded toward the door. “So, shall we get on with it?”

“Um, yes, of course,” said McCall. She pushed open the doors and escorted the two sheriffs through the room. She stopped at a specific cabinet, checked the label and then her own clipboard, then opened it up for them. Behind his shades, Bro had to close his eyes for a second and take a careful breath, though the rest of his body language didn’t change one iota.

Maya Peixes was only a couple years older than his Rose and built very similarly. She was a lot lighter skinned and had longer hair, but she was short and round, though she ran a bit more toward pear where Rose ran a bit more toward apple. He was struck by how lively she still looked. A fragility that hadn’t been in her pictures displayed itself in the ashen color of her slack face, eyes open and unseeing. His gut twisted in the knowledge that no amount of training would ever completely guarantee that he could save any of his kids from the same nasty end.

“Only the bite on her neck?” Bro asked.

McCall nodded. “Yeah, she’s got scratches and bruises all over, but this was the fatal wound,” she said. “And really the only wound with depth.” She lifted up her clipboard to go over the notes. “According to the coroner, it looked like the, uh, mountain lion must have tackled her to the ground, torn out her throat, and then not liked the taste of her.”

No, that was definitely wrong. “Can I see that?” he asked McCall, holding out his hand over the corpse. She blinked at him in confusion for a moment before realizing he wanted the clipboard and handing it over.

Stilinski was watching Bro carefully. “You were expecting something else?”

Bro nodded once in confirmation as he read over the report. “Cronus Ampora was quartered. We’re still finding bits of him all over the woods.”

McCall nodded. “Well, that makes sense if something was trying to eat him.”

“Yes, it would.” Flip. Flip. Everything was in order. The report was exactly as McCall had said, but none of this settled right with Bro at all. It was way too big of a coincidence.

Stilinski’s suspicious look only intensified. “Ampora?” he repeated. “I thought you said they were siblings.”

Bro nodded. “Yeah, family’s split down gender lines. Boys go Ampora. Girls go Peixes. She pops them out about every nine months like some kind of creepy alien bug queen, so it’s a crazy big family,” he said, and Stilinski rolled his eyes. “Thing is, this is the sixteenth Peixes girl to die in the past twenty years.” He handed the clipboard back to McCall. “But the first who didn’t die of drowning.”

Stilinski’s expression had finally changed to one of surprise. Ha, victory. “You’re thinking there’s a serial killer attacking this one family, and that something, somehow, changed the pattern?”

Bro shrugged again. “Maybe. But it’s the first clue we’ve had in twenty years of unsolved murder.” He nodded to the body. “Would you mind sending me all the related files and getting me impressions of the teeth marks so we can compare to Ampora? I’d at least like to know if maybe they were killed in the same place and moved. If you’re getting curious, I’d be more than happy to return the favor in kind.”

Stilinski shook his head, clearly perplexed. “I’m sorry, are you… Are you actually _working_?”

Bro showed a little bit more of his teeth than usual as he coolly replied, “Look, I honestly do not give a shit who ran the red lights or who toked up behind the high school or any of these stupid-ass small town problems that are constantly piling up on my desk. But these are dead _kids_ , Stilinski. Muirenn Peixes, Yale Peixes, Anat Peixes, Hai Peixes, Denìz Peixes, Nehìr Peixes, and now Maya Peixes have all died during the time I’ve been in office. Died because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out what the fuck was killing them all.

“I know I’m not worth much, and I’ve gotta be the laziest motherfucker in the force; I don’t need you to tell me that. But if I’m worth a single grain of salt as a human fucking being, then I will do absolutely everything within my power to try to keep Meenah Peixes from followin’ after her sisters.”

Stilinski was quiet for a time, watching him, analyzing. It set Bro’s nerves on fire, but like hell was he going to be the one to flinch first. Finally, Stilinski looked to McCall, then the corpse, and then back to Bro again before saying, “Have you considered werewolves?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Bro growled, waving Stilinski off as he turned and headed out from the room. “Thanks for the help. I’m sure it was hella difficult pulling that steel rod outta your ass.” The doors thudded hard behind him.

Melissa pushed the body back into the cabinet, commenting, “What a strange man.”

Stilinski rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

* * *

timaeusTestified [TT] opened memo on board WHO LET THE DAVE OUT  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited tentacleTherapist [TT] \--  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited turntechGodhead [TG] \--  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited golgothasTerror [GT] \--  
TG: why was i the second invite  
TT: TTs must stick together, obviously.  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited gardenGnostic [GG] \--  
GT: Oh swell! Hi jade!  
GG: jake, were sitting across from each other on the same couch XP  
GT: So far.  
GT: Ive missed you so much.  
GT: *A single manly tear rolls down my cheek.*  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited ectoBiologist [EG] \--  
GG: pfft  
EG: what?  
GT: Sorry chum she was laughing at me! Oops?  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has invited tipsyGnostalgic [TG] \--  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] has banned tipsyGnostalgic [TG] \--  
TG: WHOA WHOA WHOA  
TG: bro wtf do you think youre doin  
TT: You said to invite everyone.  
TG: everyone who knows im a motherfuckin werewolf bro not the whole town  
TT: …  
TT: No one told Roxy?  
TT: I didn’t.  
GG: nope!  
EG: not me!  
GT: Gosh i dont even know the last time i spoke to her.  
TG: roxy hasnt seen it roxy doesnt need to know  
TT: Uh, if you insist. It’s just…  
TG: just what  
\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] invited her own damn self --  
TT: She does have Trollian installed in addition to Pesterchum, which means chum-blocking doesn’t actually work on her.  
TG: goddammit  
TG: unkool bro whythe disinbite?  
TT: Yeah, Dave, why the disinbite?  
TG: brb gotta kick an ass  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is Busy! --  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] is Busy! --  
TT: This may take a while.  
TT: So, how’s your internship, Roxy?  
TG: ugh borring snooty science guyz who thinnk i cant possbly know thinks   
TG: one guy actully asked how many profs i sleept wit to graduate!!!!  
GG: oh my gosh, thats horrible!!! D:  
TG: ye mom fired him C:  
TT: Do me a favor, Roxy? Start carrying a tape recorder? I could write an entire paper on this subject.  
TG: c i new ud say that so asked mom  
TG: she said no i cant xuz ahh the senstive materiaos  
TG: *cuz  
TG: *of  
TG: idek hiw i managed that those keys arent ner echother  
TT: :(  
TG: :C  
GT: Agh im sorry roxy i was trying to wait for the appropriate time to greet you when but this story took an unexpected downturn and i didnt want you to think i was ignoring you!  
EB: yeah, um, me also?  
EB: hi, roxy! :)  
TG: omg thats so sweet!!! ty jhn an…..  
TG: who r u?  
GG: roxy, GT is my cousin jake harley!!  
GT: You were a grade above me in school?  
TG: OMG DEPUTY BUTT!!!!!!  
TG: how culd i forget?!! :D  
GT: …  
GT: I dont mean to be rude but uh  
GT: Are you having trouble typing?  
TG: im verry drunk rite now  
GT: Oh i see.  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] is now Active! --  
TT: Dave says to tell you we were planning a surprise party for you but that I invited you by accident so he had to disinvite you real quick and now the surprise is ruined.  
TG: my birghday isnt for months???  
TT: Yeah, he’s an idiot.  
TT: Dirk, you didn’t murder him, did you? That would rather negate the purpose of this board.  
TT: Nah, he’ll be back after he finishes lickin his wounds.  
TG: … soooooooooooo…  
TG: why am i disinvited?  
TG: if i did something wrong u guyz can just tell me u know?  
TG: i dont want anyone mad at me  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] is Away! --  
TT: Roxy, I promise it’s not that.  
TT: I’m… I am honestly vexed as to what I can or should say about the issue at hand, and even if I did know that, I honestly am not sure I could conclude how to word it correctly at the moment.  
TT: Let us simply say that the issue concerns Dave, not you, and in the end, who he tells is his decision.  
TT: All five of us discovered this issue by mere circumstance. If you were to be told, you would be the first person that he told on purpose. In his delicate state, I’m not sure that is a thing he can do right now.  
TG: oooh i see  
TG: well thats okay then i can respect that  
TG: well exept hust  
TG: did bro say smthn cuz i can whomp him  
TT: What would Bro  
TT: No, Bro hasn’t done anything. He’s been very careful to try to avoid instilling his own issues in his sons.  
TT: I mean, he failed miserably, obviously. But he tries hard, and nothing big has come of that recently.  
GT: What issues??  
GG: tact jake!!!!  
GT: Sorry i just  
GT: Im very confused as to what were talking about?  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now Active! --  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] is now Active! --  
TG: you and me both bro i thought this board was supposed to be for discussing my werewolf issues  
TG: if anyone in this family is making me develop psychological damage its dirk  
TT: You’re welcome.  
TG: wrewolf issues???  
TG: oh shit wait  
TT: Dude, I’m not gonna tell you again. Fucking tell her already!  
\-- golgothasTerror [GT] has banned timaeusTestified [TT] \--  
TG: O.O  
TG: uh  
EB: jake?  
GT: My finger slipped.  
TG: ooookay everyone take a sec to chill  
TG: then im gonna invite him back so he stops breathing over my fucking shoulder like a goddamn pervert


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, this chat conversation went long enough that I had to split it up between three chapters and add some scenes to break up the monotony. It's all necessary to establish, it's just that it comes in the form of blab. But you're Homestuck fans, so I guess you're used to that.

“What the fuck is his issue with me?” Dirk snarls over your shoulder as he glares at the chat window. “He’s been throwing shade every time I’m within sight for months now!”

You shrug as casually as possible. “I thought it was the same issue everyone else has had with you for months now,” you tell him (maybe a bit sharply).

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, but he doesn’t even know Roxy,” he says, gesturing angrily to your screen. “You see that? She, like everyone else, only really knows him for his choice ass.”

“Okay, first, he already didn’t like you because you said things like that,” you point out. “And have you considered that maybe what everyone hates about the thing with Roxy isn’t so much the Roxy part of the equation － though upsetting a living embodiment of a Disney princess was a particularly stupid move of you － but that the act itself was a particularly disgusting low, even for you?”

Dirk huffs and crosses his arms. “For the millionth time, he has cheated on literally everyone he’s ever dated. Maybe I was manipulative－”

“Maybe.” You roll your eyes.

“－ but bringing that to a head ensured that the inevitable hurt she got from him was from a boyfriend of a few months and not one of a few years like Megido or Zahhak.”

“At the cost of her friend of _twelve years_ ,” you snap.

Dirk, god help him, actually looks confused. Before this idiotic conversation can continue, you /invite him back into the board and memo and tell him to go sit at his own computer.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] has invited timaeusTestified [TT] \--  
TG: shuld i jsut  
TG: like  
TG: go?  
TG: nah  
TG: look i know dick is a dirk  
TT: Cute.  
TG: but for once in his forty years of existence hes right  
TT: I am three years older than you.  
TG: sure you are grandma  
TG: roxy im a werewolf  
TG: like for real  
TG: this isnt an rp or a dumb prank or a mental break  
TG: i got bit and now im a werewolf and weird scary shit is happening  
TG: we made this board just now so the people who know can discuss what to do without drawing a bunch of attention to ourselves  
TG: since this isnt really a thing i want going public  
TG: especially since serket may or may not be out renewing her dave-hunting license at this very moment  
TG: awe hon are u ok?  
TG: uh yeah i guess  
TG: so  
TG: i guess now we get started  
GT: Really? You believe? Just like that?  
TG: well yeah  
TG: davey would never lie to me  
TG: besides rose said it was senstive so evn if hes crazy i shelf be nice about it  
GG: shelf?  
TG: *should  
TT: Roxy, please either go to bed or get some coffee.  
TG: sssssh  
TG: tell me mor wolf stufs  
TG: okay well heres the jist  
TG: - dave got bit by an alpha werewolf and now hes a beta werewolf  
TG: - this means the alpha has the magical ability to jerk dave around by the puppet strings  
TG: - we have no fucking clue who this alpha is  
GT: But were pretty sure they killed cronus ampora and possibly maya peixes.  
TT: That is the first item on my list of issues we need to address. Jade, in our lunchtime discussion, you said that you don’t want to “out” fellow supernaturals because of the Speaker Murders. I understand that, but I was hoping it may be possible for you to find out what known alphas may have been in the area at the time?  
TT: If you’re worried about us knowing too much, you and Jake can discuss it yourselves and just come to us when you’ve reached a conclusion.  
GT: Im not sure much discussion needed. Theres only one in this county and maybe… five? in the surrounding counties.  
GG: even if we told you who they were the fact that this alpha bit dave in a panic tells me that they must be new! they must not have any other pack members.  
GT: We suspect cronus may have recently become an alpha but we havent been able to get confirmation on that. That would be why whoever killed him is a newbie alpha.  
TT: And your alpha?  
GT: Isnt up for discussion.  
GG: sorry! :(  
TT: … okay.  
TT: Is there anything you can tell us that gives us somewhere to start looking?  
GT: Er… give us a minute to discuss?  
\-- gardenGnostic [GG] is Away!  
\-- golgothasTerror [GT] is Away!  
TG: okydoke whilst they do that thisn  
TG: *thing  
TG: was there more to tell me dave?  
TG: yeah hold on let me scroll up  
TG: okay  
TG: - my new alpha is probably a murderer  
TG: - which is scary as shit  
TG: *HUGGLES*  
TG: okay thats nice on with the list  
EB: we should all totally cuddlepile dave later  
TG: no you should not  
TG: you should all stay home and read about werewolves  
TG: back to the list  
EB: jade says she’s in on the cuddlepiling :D  
TG: fml  
TT: Please, allow me to attempt to continue the conversation as you were intending.  
TT: - now dave cant eat sugar and has rare steaks for breakfast its pretty gross  
TT: - he also turns up naked in the woods sometimes  
TG: i was not naked i had pjs and it was once  
EB: just the pants though.  
TG: how would you know  
EB: rose told me!  
TG: traitor  
TG: dont worry dave iss a p common situation in or family  
TG: *our  
TT: - dave may or may not have lost his ever loving shit in front of a werewolf hunter  
TT: - specifically the one that pushed nitram off the roof on a lark  
TT: Still no indication as to whether she actually saw any signs of wolfishness, but I’ve put bots in all her devices and accounts to text mine and alert me every time she says “wolf.”  
TT: Which is a lot apparently.  
TT: Also: holy shit, Rose, did that hurt?  
TT: - ssh im not done  
TG: oh god  
\-- gardenGnostic [GG] is Active! --  
\-- golgothasTerror [GT] is Active! --  
GG: holy shit, rose, did that hurt?!  
GG: …  
GG: lmao  
TT: - this occurred because dave is a newbie with no ability to control himself  
TT: Now, I am done.  
TT: No, wait.  
TT: - also jade and jake are werewolves too but from a different pack but are being super cagey about it for safety reasons that were all trying to respect while also being morbidly curious  
TT: There.  
GT: I do appreciate that respect by the way. I know were putting you in an awkward situation!  
TT: It’s not actually a big deal, I assure you. We may not know you well, Jake, but we trust Jade. Besides, anyone my father would actually allow to act as second-in-command even in a position he hates must be a rather stand-up fellow.  
EB: pft you made him blush  
GT: Thanks pal!  
TT: All silliness aside, did that actually help, Roxy, or should I actually remove my rear from the couch cushion in order to locate you and explain to you more thoroughly and with less sarcasm in person?  
TG: no it hink i got it  
TG: btu that junk abotu dave having nio conteol and aksi being controlled is hella converning  
TG: *also  
TT: Yeah, that’s why I wanted you in on this.  
TG: I KNEW YOU PLANNED IT  
TT: Quiet, sonny, your elder is speaking.  
TT: I was thinking that if you can put the vodka down for a bit, we could overclock ourselves and finish Project Mew in no more than a week.  
TG: the fuck is project mew  
TG: hm is ee where yr goin but its still not an immediate sollutipn  
TG: even if we finish tomorw testing could take months  
TT: I was including testing in my estimate. Months is how long it would take at our current pace, but we haven’t been giving the project priority, your sober time has been mostly spent with your mom, and I admit that I keep dicking around with the fine details.  
TT: If we prioritize getting the absolute minimal for functionality done, I think we can push it.  
TG: dirk were not risking blowing up one of my cats  
TG: or dave  
TG: okay seriously wtf is project mew  
TG: why am i being lumped in with the cats  
TT: Okay, so you know about pet ID chips, right?  
TG: no  
TG: we dont have pets because were not gross people  
GT: Hey!  
TG: and also i am no ones fucking pet  
GG: dave, your room is full of dead things! how are you not a gross person? :P  
TG: because my dead things dont run out and roll around in poop the second i finish sanitizing them and most of them are collected into jars  
GT: Wait is this how you got bit?  
EB: it’s definitely how he got bit. :P  
TT: Ugh, okay, let’s try this again because you are completely missing the point.  
TT: Okay, say you have a “domesticated” animal that you value for some reason, but because it’s an animal it tends to escape occasionally and may not figure out how to get back to the food source. That’s why you put a collar on it with an ID tag.  
TG: i am capable of identifying myself thanks  
TG: dave si promise thise is a good idea just listen  
TT: But collars don’t always stay in place, and cats are a liquid. So how do you guarantee that your animal is returned to you if it is lost and without its collar?  
TT: Thus the invention of microchip implants used for pet identification. They’re very small subdermal devices, small enough to be inserted with a syringe. Any vet can use a scanner to look for the chip and read the data off of it.  
TG: okay still dont see how this applies to me but how the hell do you charge something thats literally inside of an animal  
TT: Exactly.  
TT: They use passive RFID. They’re only data storage, and only powered by the use of a scanner. Their only function is to give the vet with the scanner a name and address.  
TT: You cannot use them to actively go find your animal. The system entirely relies on your animal being found by someone, that someone knowing that these microchips are a thing, that someone taking the animal to the vet to see if your animal has one, and that person deciding to go to the trouble of trying to get it returned to you.  
TT: If you want to just be able to figure out where your animal is and go retrieve it? The tech does not exist.  
EB: wait but i thought it did?  
EB: don’t scientists use things like that to like track dolphins and stuff?  
TT: Looked into that. Those are all external devices.  
TT: If it’s going to be on the animal for a long time or needs to be small, you usually go with a radio transmitter. Positioning on those things is vague, but they take a lot less power and can be small enough to attach to a collar or band. Not great for figuring out which street Fido is on, but pretty good for making sure all the wolves stay in the national park instead of out devouring the local sheep populace.  
TT: There are GPS transmitters for more specific positioning, but they tend to be bulkier because they require more power and usually you can’t just go recharge them every couple days.  
TT: Well, also the transmitters are big because they’re also usually in places that don’t have cell towers everywhere.  
TT: My point is that while a radio collar is better than nothing, Roxy’s cats have slipped out of them on multiple occasions, and since Dave went missing in just his pants, we can’t rely on a radio transmitter actually being on him if/when it happens again. Especially since even the smaller ones can be easily spotted, and therefore easily removed by the person abducting him.

You push the computer away across the kitchen table. (And by “kitchen” you mean “section of the main apartment area separated by a single short counter and a lopsided table.”) Your chest hurts and you can’t stare at this screen any longer, the blur of ugly colors making you sick. Dirk glances up from his position on the couch, then back to his own laptop.

TT: Uh, just a sec.

“Dude, what’s up?” Dirk calls from the couch.

“Nothing,” you growl. You press your forehead against the wood and fold your arms over your head. “Can a guy not take a breather from staring at a screen so long?”

“You once spent fifty-four hours at your computer,” Dirk points out.

“You once spent eighty-seven,” you counter.

You hear him sigh. You even pick up the shuffle-scritch sound of him moving his Augmented Reality shades to the top of his head, probably to rub at his eyes and the bridge of his nose. You recognize the movement, but you’ve never been able to _hear_ it before. Freaky. “Look, I know we Striders are all emotionally stunted assholes, and, whatever, we’re all capable of handling our shit. If this was one of your usual hissy fits, I’d just wait it out as you dealt with it on your own,” he explains. “But we’re all worried about your well-being right now, so, sorry, bro, I actually do need to check in regularly and force you to talk about your feelings, because apparently some seriously bad shit could happen at the drop of a hat, and I need a fucking warning, and because you are, as previously mentioned, also a Strider, I know I can’t trust you to tell me on your own the things I need to know, so I’ve gotta force it _all_ out, and if you don’t explain what’s making you breathe like that I’m gonna go open up your camera. Hope you didn't use that roll yet.”

It’s only then that you realize you’re hyperventilating. Oh. You slow your breaths back down and sit up. “I… didn’t know I was doing that.” Your skin itches.

He’s watching you. “Not reassuring, bro.”

You sigh and try to put your thoughts in order. “Okay, fine. No frontin', but I’m not having a fuckin' tea time feelings party with you, either. Quick relay of the facts, and then we’re done,” you tell him. “I…” You groan and rub your forehead. “Look, I know you’re right about keeping track of me, I just… It’s hard to look at. Since the first time you took a punch, Bro has trained both of us how to throw one back. We’re supposed to be solid, capable of defending ourselves.

“But _something_ pulled me out of my bed while I was unconscious and sent me traipsing through the woods for _hours_ before I woke up with absolutely no clue as to what had happened, and absolutely anyone could have done anything to me, could still do so, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’m utterly fucking helpless and not even aware of the fact that I’m being victimized while it’s happening, and that’s just…” You make a vague gesture. You don’t actually know of a word that fits.

Dirk nods and flips his shades back down. “Yeah, I know. It scares the shit out of me. Why do you think I want to put a tracking chip on you? Maybe attach an alert program. Hell, I’ve even got a budding fantasy without any idea of how to actualize it where maybe I can figure out some sort of defense mechanism for these psychic commands that will fry this douchebag’s brains to mush next time he tries to fucking creep on you.”

You laugh at that. Dirk has never been anything else than utterly fucking predictable. “Yeah, okay, _that_ I will let you install,” you joke. “Cyborg me up, dawg.”

“You’re the dog, dawg,” he says back, but he returns his attention to his laptop, already typing again. After taking a moment to get your breathing on pace, your skin stops threatening to bust out in fur, and you pull your own laptop back in front of you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Extra long explanatory convo time is finally wrapping up!

TT: Okay, so we do have the technology to miniaturize a transmitter and even implant it beneath the skin, but it would need regular recharging, which takes it back to a slightly larger device on the outside of the skin.  
TT: Interesting, so how have you and Roxy planned to compensate for this lack in technology?  
TT: Well, recharging mats are a thing. And that gave Roxy an idea. If we could build a subdermal device capable of recharging via the cat’s bed instead of a direct connection, then suddenly that opens whole new avenues in pet-location technology.  
TG: you want me to sleep on a recharging mat  
TT: I think a pillow should be fine, but I won’t be able to give any real details on how it might work for you until Roxy and I finalize the version for cats.  
TT: Roxy, anything you want to add?  
TT: Roxy?  
TT: Rose?  
TT: Yes, give me a minute, please. I’m trying to locate－ ah.  
TT: She has fallen asleep.  
TT: Okay, well, that’s good I guess. I’ll come over and help you clear out the booze tomorrow?  
TT: Our house is too big, and Mom will keep accidentally buying it. I think it would be best if she could stay over with you for a while. I can talk Bro into it without giving anything away.  
TT: Good deal.  
TT: Okay, so that addresses item two on my list: How to find Dave when he’s missing. I’ll make a note that Dirk and Roxy are handling it.  
TT: Back to item one: Suspicious alphas?  
GG: well, like we said, everybody is accounted for or has no motive or isnt a newbie and therefore lacks the motivation  
TT: I sense a “but”?  
GT: But there is one chap.  
GT: I really think were barking up the wrong tree on this so to speak but hes the only alpha we know of in the area that even remotely fits. Admittedly because hes such an unknown factor.  
GT: Marks for him: Hes a new alpha with few to no betas depending on who you ask. Hes also in beacon hills where mayas body was found.  
GG: marks against him: hes supposedly a true alpha! if thats true theres no way hed do something like this!  
GT: Also incongruous is the fact that he was an alpha *before* this happened. I mean I guess he could have lost it somehow and then went to regain it, but that seems a bit of a reach…  
TG: whats a true alpha  
TT: May I inquire  
TT: Yes, what Dave said.  
GG: a true alpha is extremely rare! :O  
GG: the last known one was talia hale which was just a generation or so back, so thats why a lot of people dont believe hes one!  
GG: two in the same area in a short period of time is really unheard of but i guess not impossible?  
GG: anyway its someone who developed the power on their own instead of stealing it from someone else  
TT: So exactly how much murder does someone have to commit to level up like that?  
GT: Zilch!  
GT: Thats rather the point actually.  
GT: A true alpha is built on will and strength of character. Theyre extremely protective empathetic and compassionate.

You can see Dirk’s eyebrows go up. Same.

TG: jake are you actually telling us this dude became an alpha  
TG: a status that according to you is usually gained through violence  
TG: through the magic of friendship  
GT: Uh i guess??  
GT: Only if you believe he is one in the first place.  
GG: yeah thats the main thing guys  
GG: a LOT has been happening in beacon hills over the past few years  
GG: if hes a true alpha then his ability to deal with these threats makes him a hero and you really need to be respectful on approaching him because tbh you need an ally  
GT: But if he got his alpha-hood the usual way he is quite possibly the most dangerous scoundrel in beacon county and therefore you *must* approach humbly if you want to leave alive. I think you have enough threats upon your person for the moment.  
GG: but like we said he is the absolute only person who comes even remotely close to fitting the profile of who were looking for  
TT: And his name is?  
GT: Scott mccall.  
GT: Sending you the contact information now.  
TT: Thank you, Deputy.  
TG: so how many more items are on that list  
TT: Just a few.  
TG: a few dozen  
TT: Three, to be precise. I was vague because it’s possible that more may arise in this discussion.  
TG: hasnt this discussion gone on long enough  
TT: Dave, we’re doing this for you, you ungrateful son of a bitch.  
TT: Don’t talk about my mother that way, please.  
TT: Sorry.  
GG: lmao  
TG: see this is why this has been going so long  
TT: Then maybe you should try piping down so we can streamline the discussion.  
TG: yes im the problem here  
TT: Glad you agree.

You snap your fingers to make sure Dirk is looking at you, and then you stick your tongue out at him. He rolls his head just a little so that you’ll know he’s rolling his eyes behind the shades. Despite the fact that he’s at his computer, you see that the lenses are flickering with activity. And they say you have a short attention span.

You’re about to return said attention to the chat window when a key rattles in the lock. You and Dirk both immediately react by adjusting your positions so that Bro can’t easily see what’s on the screens. He opens the door, enters, and stops, raising his eyebrow. “What?” you ask.

“You’re in the same room at the same time,” he says. “What are you up to?”

You flip your computer toward him very, very briefly. Long enough to see that there is text but not what the text is. “Group chat that includes shared friends. Discussing both homework and weekend plans.” It’s an easy lie mostly because it’s been the truth often enough. If you and Dirk are in the same room and not shedding blood, it’s usually because you have other people to talk to. (You check the sword wound on your arm. Well, not _actively_ shedding blood.)

Bro nods, closes the door behind him, and locks it all three deadbolts. “Right, that reminds me,” he mumbles as he makes his way over Dirk’s legs, which are stretched out on the coffee table (no one here drinks coffee, but it’s still called that), to the side of main room where he usually drops his work shit. “Harley said something about a pesterchum extension. Apparently, he’s color blind, too?”

“Isn’t that something you should know as his employer?” Dirk asks, and Bro makes a noncommittal noise. He drops down into the shitty, beat up and duct tape-repaired armchair with an exhausted old man grunt that makes both you and Dirk snicker, to which he replies with doubled middle fingers. This is why you keep calling him "Bro" despite the dad thing being revealed years ago. Well, this and also habit.

TG: hey jake bro says you said something about a pesterchum extension  
GT: Oh right!  
TT: Yes, that’s item #5.  
GT: You can assign fonts to your chumroll so even when the colors are indistinguishable the lines of text still look fairly different!  
GT: The captors made it for me and jade on commission.  
TT: Captors? Seriously?  
TT: Dave, let me see that file before you install it.  
TG: sure mom  
TT: I thought I was your grandma. Jesus, get your story straight.  
TG: sure mary

As Bro flips through TV channels, Dirk pipes up again, “So, hey, why are you two hours and sixteen minutes later than average?”

“Jesus Christ, Dirk,” he groans, and he lifts his shades to rub at his eyes and the bridge of his nose in the exact same mannerism Dirk uses. “I keep tellin’ ya, you need to tone down the creepy. It is at its best fairly annoying and at its worst deeply concerning.”

“Okay, sure, but why are you two hours and sixteen minutes later than average?” Dirk presses.

He rolls his eyes but says, “I had to go check out a body in Beacon Hills, next county over.”

Well, _that_ gets your attention. Sure, you know about Maya, but you're not supposed to yet, and if Bro went to see for himself, then he clearly thinks there's extra details involved. Dirk perks up a little, too, which in Dirk body language means that he slouches slightly less and his speech gets clearer instead of that ‘too lazy for communication’ rolling slur that sounds just like Bro when he’s tired except with slightly less Texas mixed in. “Beacon Hills?” Dirk repeats. “What’s there?”

Bro makes a noise, and an uncommon one at that. It’s sort of like frustration but with an edge of avoiding the subject. That’s… weird. “Hell if I know,” he grumbles. He settles the TV on ESPN, and Dirk hisses like an affronted cat before snatching his laptop to move position. Bro laughs at him. “Jesus, Dirk, you weren’t even watching. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s distracting,” Dirk grumbles. He’s at the kitchen in two steps and plops down across from you at the dining table.

“The ass is the best part,” Bro fake-whines at him with an exaggerated pout.

“I _meant_ the inane running commentary along with whistles and horns and shit,” Dirk says.

Bro shrugs. “Point,” he admits, and he mutes the television, willing to read the captions instead.

GT: Okey doke i found it.  
GT: Am i actually sending it to dirk or dave? Sorry i wasnt sure how much of that was just you two taunting each other.  
TT: You’re sending it to Dirk, because I was deadly serious, bro. Captors like to weave knots out of their code, and sometimes those tangles fuck shit up.  
TT: Just a sec, and I’ll get you the address, username, and password to upload to my ftp.  
GT: Whats an ftp?  
TT: …  
TT: Okay, I guess I’ll send you a Dropbox invite instead.  
GT: Capital!  
GT: Whats a dropbox?  
TT: …  
TG: oh my god  
EB: oh my god he just fell off the couch laughing.  
GG: XD he actually does use dropbox dirk! account is j.harley@fvpd.ca.gov

Dirk’s lip quirks up a millimeter in the left corner. “Down boy,” you warn, and he shoots you a glare before returning his attention to his screen. He’s typing and clicking but nothing is coming up on the group chat so he must be sending that invite. Yep, done already.

TG: wait john are they at your place  
EB: jake and jade? yeah!  
GG: yeah, johns dad thought we were staying with a relative, but weve been sharing an apartment since jake became deputy  
GG: and johns dad is all like OH IM SO PROUD OF YOU BUT THATS A REALLY SHITTY FINANCIAL DECISION AND I INSIST YOU STAY HERE UNTIL YOU HAVE ENOUGH INCOME AND SAVINGS FOR YOUR OWN HOUSE  
GG: caps for srs-ness not yelling. johns dad would never yell!  
EB: my dad would also never say shitty  
GG: i was paraphrasing!!!  
GG: so yeah we live here now :B  
EB: we also have ashwood outlining the house, so only humans can open the gate.  
EB: i mean we leave it open all the time for them now, but supernatural stuff gets scary sometimes, so it’s nice to know they can have that extra layer of protection  
TG: what the fuck are you talking about  
TT: Yeah, this sounds like a thing we need details on.  
TT: *Quietly adds a sixth item to the list.*  
TG: dammit john  
EB: oh, um, an unbroken ring or border of ash can keep werewolves and some other supernaturals either inside or outside or both.  
TT: Well, that’s a far better way to keep Dave in the apartment than handcuffs and GPS chips.  
GT: Actually no it isnt.  
GT: The ashwood has to be installed by someone proficient in magic.  
TT: Okay, who did yours?  
EB: um mr. nitram?

You and Dirk flinch back at the same time, catching Bro’s attention, but you ignore him to shoot Dirk the angriest glare possible. Dirk shrinks down in his chair and starts typing like each keystroke physically pains him. It probably does.

TT: Rufioh?  
EB: oh, um, no.  
EB: i don’t remember his name?  
EB: their dad.  
EB: the, uh  
EB: the dead one.

Dirk’s head thuds against the desk. You sigh and lean against your hand. “Well, at least that one was fucked up by someone other than you,” you assure him. He answers with a noise of angry frustration. He does not take well to being told he can’t do things, but for the time being he’ll probably try to solve this problem with his current skillset instead of attempting to learn a dead man’s magic.

Probably.

TG: okay i actually do need to do homework at some point so lets not get too sidetracked  
TG: rose whats issues 3 & 4  
TG: thats all thats left right  
TT: Correct.  
TT: Issue #3 should not involve Jake in the discussion.  
GT: Guys please dont do illegal things.  
GG: GASP i would never!!!!!  
TG: ditto  
EB: heehee!  
GT: *tears emoji*  
TT: Issue #4 is that Vriska may have seen the truth, so we need to get you started learning to fight as a werewolf as soon as possible.  
TT: Especially since you can't bring a broadsword most places.  
TT: And Dirk and I need to get us some “dealing with werewolves” training.

You glance up at the most sadistic grin that has ever crossed your brother’s face. You instantly regret everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We thought it would be funny if Bro, of all people, actually did give a shit about sports. (It's also pretty fitting for a dudebro from Texas.)


	4. Chapter 4

The Pesterchum chat goes about another seven minutes and is quickly followed by a twelve minute phone conversation between Bro and Rose, after which he informs you and Dirk that Roxy’s gonna be staying with you for a while, and the two of you pretend to be surprised until he suddenly remembers that you’d just been talking with her on Pesterchum and were probably part of the plan. You know the exact moment he realizes this because he suddenly shoots you both evil looks.

While you wait, Dirk goes through the Captor extension, occasionally muttering to himself. Eventually, he moves the code to his shades (He’s gonna sprain a brain muscle using them for complex tasks like that.), and opens a chat window on his laptop, presumably to vent by insulting the Captors directly. Meanwhile, you’re actually trying to add to your history paper despite the fact that your thoughts keep drifting to your mystery alpha and whether or not Vriska saw you wolf out, and the constant and increasing itch in your skin helps _nothing_. When Bro catches you rubbing your shoulders against the chair back for relief, he tells you to “go take a fucking shower if you’re that gross.”

The shower, as it turns out, is a surprisingly good idea. It’s pretty easy to zone out under the hot water. It doesn’t actually do anything about the way your skin itches and your blood burns and you badly want to run somewhere, anywhere, but it helps you stop thinking about it, obsessing to the point that those feelings become your whole world. Instead, you think about how Vriska's gonna fucking murder you, which is really a super helpful distraction.

BANG BANG BANG. “You plan on ever coming out?” Dirk demands through the door. “Because there are people in this house that need to piss. Namely, me.”

Oh, hey, the water’s gone cold. How long have you been in here? You start to push your blond bangs out of your face, but you’re distracted by the sight of thick claws.

Dirk makes a noise of angry frustration tinged with worry, and you hear him crack open the door. “Yo, are you ali－” You’re not sure what he sees with the room steamed up and the shower curtain still drawn. You try to pull your awareness back together. You’re leaning forward so the water splashes mostly across your back, your hands propped on the wall opposite the shower head. So it’s probably the claws that he sees.

A moment’s hesitation, and then soft footsteps as he warily enters, followed by the sound of him shutting the door behind him. And then the sound of him drawing his sword.

You sigh wearily. “I’m fine. Don’t murder me. Take your piss.”

“Separated from a werewolf who seems to be having trouble with control by only a thin sheet of plastic? Ha, no thank you,” he says. His tone is anxious, but his volume is about half what it usually is. He’s actually making the effort to keep Bro from noticing. “Turn the shower off and come out.”

It takes you a moment to process the command and then a longer moment to actually do it, but you finally pull back the curtain and step out. Dirk’s left foot edges back an inch, but he keeps his expression carefully blank as he looks you up and down. You realize he’s not wearing his Augmented Reality shades. You realize he’s holding them out to you. “What?” you ask.

“I logged you in and brought up a chat with Jake," he tells you. "Typing's easy on these. Don’t come back out until you’re human-looking.”

You’re not at all surprised that he knows your password. You take the shades from him. He has never left a room faster. You guess he’ll find somewhere else to piss. You go to the sink to look in the mirror, and you understand why he’s scared of you. The weirdest but least scary part is that you suddenly have facial hair. Does that fall out when you transform or is this just the first time it’s appeared? Your cheekbones stand out a little more. Your brow is a little more pronounced, a bit caveman-looking except for the fact that it somehow blends together with the bridge of your nose. Your eyes are glowing bright yellow (well, at least you think it’s yellow), which somehow still isn’t weirding you out as much as the facial hair but it does succeed in being scarier. Your jaws are sticking out a little more than they used to, and you open your mouth to reveal sharp carnivore teeth. Your ears are pointed at the top and stick out a little from your head, but look more elvish than canine.

You look down at your hands. They’re not really claws, on closer inspection. It’s more like the nails got two or three times as thick, grew longer, and somehow sharpened themselves. Sure, nails and claws are related, but these don’t have the rounded structure; they’re still flat across the tops of your fingertips. That’s… kind of a relief actually. Whole new appendages is a little too much to deal with right now. You’ve also got body hair in addition to the facial hair. Well, technically, you had that before, but it was a smattering of fine blond hairs that just make your dark skin look kind of ashy. Now it’s thick and dense, covering your forearms and the backs of your hands. You look down. Legs and feet have gone burly, too. Your toes also have nail-claws. Explains the holes in your sneakers from last night.

Okay, time to figure out how to put it all back. You put the shades down on the toilet cistern and lock the door. You grab up your towel from the hook and try to rub your hair as dry as possible. It’s short enough that you usually don’t bother, but you don’t want to risk these things electrocuting you. The only people with these handmade versions are Dirk and Mituna Captor, Mituna getting the first version they built, which is more like a helmet, and Dirk getting the second, which has the form of a heavy glass band across the eyes held in place by two roundish metal arms that tuck behind your ears from which protrude several gel interfaces. You don’t really trust them to put warning labels on things that need them, so you’ll have to be as careful as possible.

Finally, you wrap the towel around your waist, sit on the toilet, and put on the glasses. The display in front of your eyes glitches at you in a way that immediately gives you a migraine and you close your eyes while you pull your hair out of the way and try to arrange the things so that the interfaces touch skin. Eugh, weird.

You open your eyes again. You’re looking at the bathroom through an even yellower filter than usual, but there’s a pesterchum window cast against the wall in front of you almost like a projection. You tilt the shades down to look over the top. Nope, no projection. The display is just really good at tricking your eyes. That’s actually pretty amazing for something he built with only the four-nerd team of him, Roxy, Mituna, and Sollux and an investment from Doc. Good investment on her part. If he can make it less bulky and cheaper to construct, it’ll go up against Google Glass easy. You're kidding; he'll never finish finding flaws and finally agree to release it. Worst decision she's ever made.

You squint at the chat window, wishing it were bigger so you could see it better, and suddenly it is. Whoa.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] \--  
TG: This is actually Dirk, but don’t block me, please. I’m going to hand this over to Dave as soon as he comes out. He's wolfed out. Would you be able to tell him how to come back down?  
GT: Holy shit dirk!  
GT: Uh i guess that depends on his mental state?  
GT: If hes growling at you your first priority needs to be subduing him and making sure everyone is safe from him.  
TG: He’s hella out of it but doesn’t seem violently intended. I don’t think he’s being controlled, but he was in the shower. Why would he transform in the shower?  
GT: Oh uh okay technically a full moon is only like a moment long. The moment where it transitions from waxing to waning.  
GT: But it *looks* full for about two or three days and thats when the magic is activated. Which is also why its worse at night even if the moon is out in the daytime instead.  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is Away! --  
GT: So technically hes still under the effects of the full moon and is naturally inclined toward transformation.  
GT: Oh.  
GT: I guess you went to  
GT: Okay ill just wait here i guess.  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is Active! --  
TG: hey  
GT: Dave?  
TG: yeah  
GT: Are you okay?  
TG: peachy keen  
TG: just got out of the shower looking like a bears fursona but nbd  
TG: i think i scared the shit out of dirk again  
GT: Why would a bear have a  
GT: No wait thats the wrong question.  
TG: bear = big hairy gay man  
TG: like if you crossed a lumberjack with a motorcycle gang member and then put a dick up his ass  
GT: Lovely.  
GT: Um  
GT: Is that… what you were thinking about when you… uh… transformed?  
TG: what no  
TG: i wasnt thinking about anything actually i just zoned out  
TG: well nothing except how everything sucks and serkets gonna murder me  
TG: wait are you saying brandishing my sword will trigger a transformation  
GT: What?  
GT: Oh thats a euphemism.  
GT: Yes anything that pulls at animal instinct really. Violence procreation hunger and territorial desires are the main ones.  
TG: fanfuckingtastic  
GT: But it sounds like you just lapsed into what felt like a natural state because you werent paying attention?  
TG: maybe  
GT: Was your heart rate up? Did you feel anxious, fearful, or angry?  
TG: idk i guess  
TG: wasnt really concentrating on much except how fucking everything itches and burns and hurts  
GT: It does?  
TG: it doesnt for you  
GT: No but ive been transforming since i was wee. I was taught control after i was taught potty training.  
GT: So i guess i dont really think of it the same way?  
TG: look not that i dont appreciate everything youve done so far but do you know any bitten werewolves that maybe get where im coming from better

There’s a long pause in which he doesn’t reply, likely scouring his brains for names. You glance down at your hands. Still clawed. Yeah, that'll make you feel less anxious. Urg.

GT: Im sorry dave i really cant think of any.  
GT: I really only know my own family members.  
GT: Do you still want my help?  
GT: I mean ive never done this before but i can give it my best shot.  
TG: yeah sure sorry for being rude i guess  
GT: You werent rude!  
GT: Okay um  
GT: This is easier when theres more of an emotional trigger.  
GT: I guess try thinking about how you feel when youre human? Just concentrate on that feeling to root you back in that identity.  
TG: what the fuck  
GT: What?  
TG: nrg jake thats terrible advice  
GT: Why?  
TG: cuz human doesnt feel like anything  
GT: I mean like your mental state when you identify with being human.  
TG: i dont identify with being human  
TG: thats like identifying with being blond  
TG: its not an identity its just a fact  
TG: well it used to be anyway  
GT: Oh i see.  
GT: Um let me think about this.

A knock on the door startles you, which apparently makes you keysmash into the chat. Jake gives you a line of pure question marks, but you’re distracted by Bro shouting, “Dave, Roxy and Rose have been here for half an hour. You can’t jack off forever.”

“Can’t a man shit in peace?” you demand.

“If it takes you that long to shit, I’m taking you back to the hospital,” he threatens, but you hear his footsteps retreat. He’s obviously expecting you to come out soon.

TG: oihsegd  
GT: ?????  
TG: dave roxy and rose have been here for half an hour you cant jack off forever  
TG: cant a man shit in peace  
GT: Dave what the frigging fuck?  
TG: if it takes you that long to shit im taking you back to the hospital  
TG: oh goddammit  
TG: dirk gave me his stupid electroshades and apparently i just transcribed my conversation with bro  
GT: The sheriff saw you?  
TG: no im in the bathroom still he was yelling through the door  
TG: hence not having my own computer  
GT: Oh.  
TG: jake no pressure but im really running out of time  
TG: that was a lie theres pressure we are currently pressure cooking  
GT: Dave you need to stay calm!  
TG: im calm  
TG: im completely chill  
TG: its like the polar icecaps up in here  
GT: :/  
TG: lets just ignore the fact that the icecaps are melting  
TG: come on jake give me something to do anything  
GT: Okay lets try visualization.  
TG: ew hippie junk fine  
GT: Okay close your eyes.  
TG: if i close my eyes then i cant read the chat window  
GT: Oh right.  
GT: Okay read my instructions and then close your eyes.  
TG: sure  
GT: You have a fantasy about being cured right?  
GT: Though you have no idea how things will actually turn out you have probably pictured what you wish would happen.  
GT: So what is that scene?  
GT: What has happened?  
GT: What does it feel like?  
GT: What are you doing?

The fantasy is easy to imagine because it’s been a constant distraction needling at your mind ever since you found out you were a werewolf.

TG: i have my sword in hand and i feel clean  
GT: …  
TG: oh that wasnt a euphemism this time  
GT: Oh okay.  
GT: Okay so i think maybe for you swordfighting is how you connect to your humanity.  
GT: Try training a bit and see if it helps?  
TG: my sword is not in the bathroom jake  
GT: Ill message dirk to make sure the sheriff isnt where he can see.

It’s only a few seconds before you hear sparring start up in the main room, with Rose chastising them.

TG: thanks man i owe you  
GT: Think nothing of it!  
GT: Let me know if this helps or not.  
TG: sure

You log out and remove the shades, leaving them on the cistern for Dirk to find. Statistically, it’s the cleanest part of the bathroom, so he can’t get mad about it. You peek out the door to double check that no one is in the hall, then you dart to your room, locking the door behind you.

Your katanas are all in a broken pile in the back corner. Eventually, Bro bought you a broadsword because no amount of form training would get you to stop swinging the thing like an axe. Still, they were all _your_ swords, and you can’t stand the idea of getting rid of them. Right now you’re excusing it as an art piece.

Your broadsword is broader than a katana, but not particularly hefty as it’s sized and weighted appropriately for a scrawny fifteen-year-old. On picking it up from where it leans against your footboard, you find it now a little too light. Huh. You wonder if your strength goes back to normal with detransformation. Does it change with moon cycles? If you get cured, will you go back to your normal level?

You kick the various shit on your floor aside, pull on a pair of jeans, and immediately go into fighting stance and start going through your most familiar routine. By the time you’ve finished all the forms, the claws and arm fur are gone. You check yourself in the mirror and find everything back to normal. Well, your eyes are still that weird pale amber (Did they actually change with the bite or is that just colorblindness fucking up your perception?), but they’re not glowing anymore.

Okay, that’s surprisingly doable. Maybe you can manage this after all.

* * *

You cannot manage this for shit. That fact becomes abundantly clear when you wake up in the woods again. Mangled, bloody, broken handcuffs hang off your wrists. Great. At least the wounds on your wrists are already healing. Was Dirk there when you escaped? Was Bro? Jesus, Roxy’s sleeping on your couch; is she okay?

Someone is squatting next to you. Slowly, you move your eyes from your wrists to their form. A guy a little older than you. Light olive skin. Short, dark hair with a hint of curl. Brown eyes. Cocksucking mouth. Athletic body. Hng.

He looks a combination of amused, confused, and worried. Same. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, no, I totally meant to fall asleep here,” you say, rolling your eyes.

He smiles and holds out a hand to help you up. “I’m Scott McCall,” he says.

You have never gotten on your feet faster.


	5. Chapter 5

Bro’s training has never been that helpful against bullies since hitting back only makes sure that you’re the one that gets in trouble (though endurance training did help you escape on more than one occasion), but now, against an unknown alpha, you couldn’t be more grateful for the way you’re on your feet, in defense position, and mentally tracing out escape routes in less than a second. McCall is surprised and backs up a step. “Whoa, hey!”

You pay him no mind. There’s another teenager at your four o’clock, a few yards away, watching from a safe distance, but you won’t take your eyes off McCall long enough to look unless the other moves closer. You also smell someone else, but you can’t position them or get much detail, seeing as how you’re very, very new to this “smelling people at a distance” thing. The breeze is in the wrong direction, too. The main reason you’re able to smell them is because they’ve thrown up recently, and their breath still reeks of it.

McCall just stands there and blinks at him. “What are you doing?” he asks.

You don’t answer. You measure his constant aborted movements as he tries to come closer and then holds himself back, not wanting to make you run yet. In those movements, you see the way his muscles move. Long muscles, not overly bulky, trained for endurance over strength. If you run, there’s a good chance he’ll catch you, but you’re little good in a fight without your sword in hand.

“Wait, are… are you afraid of me?” McCall asks, squeaking a little. He looks confused and hurt, putting on a puppydog pout.

“You’re an alpha,” you say, though really it’s starting to turn into more of a question. _This_ is the guy you were warned about? The powerhouse of Beacon Hills?

“So?” asks McCall, but you can tell by the way he can’t meet your eyes that he already knows the answer.

“Alphas are murderers.”

“Not all of them!” McCall insists.

“’s not what I heard,” you counter.

“Yeah?” says the teenarger at your four o’clock. That voice sounds familiar. “Who’s your alpha?”

You turn just enough to spot him leaning against a tree in the woods. He’s feigning casual, but it’s enough of a distance to give him a good head start running away from you, and you can hear the thundering beat of his heart. “Stilinski?” you ask.

Stiles scowls. “White hair on black skin, dropping into some martial arts stance, and up to something stupid?” He shakes his head. “I knew it was you when Scott spotted you, but man, I’d really hoped not.”

“You know him?” McCall asks, looking back and forth between the two of you a little comically.

Stiles gestures to you as he answers, “Scott, this is Dave Strider. His dad’s the reason we’re here.”

That makes you falter. “My… what?”

Stiles rolls his eyes in annoyance, crosses his arms. It’s his tell for when he’s feeling uncertain. “Yesterday, your dad talked to my dad about the murder of Maya Peixes. Some of the shit he said sounded like werewolves, but when my dad said that, yours blew him off. So, after thinking about it, Dad finally asked me to take Scott into Fairvale to check it out. Just look around and see if we noticed anything, not get involved in any of the freaky mafia shit your town has going on.”

You squint, confused. “Bro’s actually working?”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, that’s what Dad said, too.” He shrugs and tells you, “Apparently, Strider is actually upset about all these dead girls.”

“Girls?” you repeat. “Plural?”

Stiles nods. “Apparently sixteen Peixes girls have died in the past twenty years. Dad looked into it and before the birth of that first Peixes girl that died? There weren’t any Peixes. But there had been a _different_ rash of murdered girls all in the same family in a different county, further south. He found two other counties with similar circumstances, all of it spanning about eighty years,” he says. “Every single one of them was asphyxiated with salt water in the lungs despite being nowhere near the coast. Every single one _except_ Maya Peixes, who was tackled to the ground by an animal and then had her throat torn out.”

You shake your head. Cronus Ampora had been turned to confetti. “Just the one wound?”

“Yeah, your dad thought that was interesting, too.”

You glance between the two boys. “He’s your alpha?” you ask Stiles, nodding to Scott.

Stiles laughs. “Nah, I’m human. We’re just…” He becomes suddenly awkward. “Uh, friends, I guess.”

You glance to Scott. “So… the thing about being a True Alpha… that you’ve never murdered…?”

Scott smiles gently. “That’s true,” he says. “Promise.”

You nod and finally drop out of your defensive stance. “Roxy, is that you?!” you call into the forest.

She drops down from a tree a few yards behind Scott, making him jump. She’s carrying a sniper rifle. She brushes her bright pink hair out of her eyes with a wide grin. “Hey!” she calls. “Your new senses are good!”

You shrug. “You smell like puke and orange juice," you tell her. "It was just a good guess.”

Roxy licks her teeth self-consciously. “Oh, sorry, I thought I washed that all out.”

You shrug and tell her, “Yeah, I don’t think that will work on me unless you ram the toothbrush down your throat. How did you find me?”

She shrugs. “I just hoped really hard. Made a wish on a falling star and all that junk,” she teases. “It was probably just an airplane, but it doesn’t hurt to try! I got here just as they did, so I decided it was better to take a position and wait quietly to see how things developed.”

You nod and turn to Scott and Stiles and gesture to her, “McCall, Stilinski, this is my aunt, Roxy Lalonde, expert hacker, town drunkard, and champion sharpshooter.”

Cheerfully, she makes a hat-tipping gesture using the barrel of her gun.

* * *

John, Jade, and Jake are still inactive on Pesterchum, though you’re pretty sure that Jake is at work if you _really_ need him. (But that would probably mean waving what’s been happening right under Bro’s nose, and you are still firmly set against that.) You’re given a lift in the back of Roxy’s “pink Cat-illac” (which is no longer pink to your eye), freshly dressed and sword in hand. You haven’t let go of it since she handed it to you, and god bless her for knowing you well enough to think “I’m going to go look for Dave in the woods, I should bring my scariest gun, a change of clothes for him, and his sword.” She is definitely your favorite relative.

Scott and Stiles still have a ton of questions for you, and, to be honest, you have some for them. But you want your friends and defensible position, and Scott said he needed to catch up with his pack, which had been spread out across other parts of the Fairvale Preserve to look for clues, and tell them what’s up. After some debate and phone tag, it’s decided that they’ll meet you at the Lalonde house. Roxy and Rose both assure you that Doc won’t be there, but Rose is very obviously unhappy, because Roxy was supposed to be removed from her primary source of alcohol as of yesterday. You’d assured her it wouldn’t be a big deal since Roxy hasn’t been sober longer than she’s used to yet, and she knows that you need her at her best to operate that gun. Inwardly, you’re just as nervous as Rose is.

“House” is an understatement. The fucking behemoth is sat right on top of a goddamn waterfall. The main room, where Scott will come meet you with his pack, is huge and grandiose and full of wizards. Roxy is sitting with her gun and a plate of pizza pockets on the shoulders of a twenty foot granite statue of Zazzerpan the Learned. Whoever the fuck that is. Dirk is sitting on the top of a very wide staircase smack in the middle of the room, looking bored as hell with lights flashing across his lenses at migraine-inducing speeds. There’s also a bronzed vacuum cleaner that is actually plugged in and capable of bring turned on on a pedestal in the corner. There’s three huge bookshelves of every smutty wizard books ever written along one wall. And there’s an eldritch princess doll as tall as Roxy sitting next to Rose on the couch. There’s also about seven lopsided cats in the room as Roxy has the ongoing policy of adopting every "special requirements" cat in the city.

After meeting Bro, a lot of people ask why the hell you’d choose to live with this paranoid loner who keeps swords in the fridge and can’t keep his ass out of trouble, instead of your rich as hell mother. This is because the Lalonde side of your family is, as Vantas once put it, “shithive maggots.” You lived here on and off as a kid, and it was always a relief to come back to Bro's shitty apartment. Eventually, when you were 11, you just asked to stay.

The first guest to turn up is, surprisingly, Becquerel. You raise an eyebrow and check your phone. The Harleyberts are still offline. “Yo, I don’t suppose you could go fetch the pups?” you ask him. Instead of answering, he curls up at the feet of the eldritch princess. “Yeah, okay, play innocent all you want. I know you’re a person. I’ve caught on to your game.”

“Becquerel’s a person?” Roxy asks with a mouth full of pizza pocket.

“Dave’s just being a dick,” Dirk answers at the same time that Rose says, “That is our suspicion, yes, but the Harleys haven’t given an answer, and John only giggles in response.”

Dirk shifts to look at Rose. “Wait, really?” he asks.

She nods. “Run the metrics yourself.”

The pattern of lights on his shades shifts suddenly. “Huh,” he says. “I didn’t know real wolves were that small. Still, they say he’s a dog. Those get big.”

“Possible, but unlikely,” said Rose. “All the dogs with strong wolf characteristics, even the crossbreeds and mutts, tend to remain within the size range of actual wolves. Too far outside that norm and other features change as well. Also compare that while the proportions are different, he seems to have a mass comparable to that of the average human adult.”

“Huh,” Dirk says, impressed.

You shake your head. “I can’t believe y'all measured him.”

Rose finally looks up from her knitting. “Why? How did you reach the conclusion?”

“He acts like a person!” you object loudly. Becquerel just glances at you and huffs. Before the discussion can continue, you’re cut off by the sound of the doorbell. Oddly, in this completely disastrous house of whimsy, the doorbell sound is completely normal. You go to the door, open it, and find Scott and Stiles standing there. Stiles is scowling, and Scott is shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously. There’s a jeep now parked in the front drive which must belong to Stiles. Two motorcycles, one with one person on it and one with two people on it, are coming up the road, slowing as they approach the house.

“Hey,” says Scott. “Um…”

You nod past him to the motorcycles. They’re pulling in now, and it bothers you that there are people parking in your mom’s drive that you don’t fucking know. “Those your friends?” you ask.

Scott nods and points out each one. “Erica, Boyd, Isaac,” he tells you. Erica is tallish but possibly would be only a little above average without the heels, is white with long blonde hair that shows from under her helmet (much darker blonde than yours), and wears a lot of leather. When she takes off her helmet, she’s looking at Scott, and her eyes flash briefly yellow. Her grin is all teeth and murder. Boyd is about Erica’s height, black with a shaved head, and pretty built. He seems pretty stoic, but he doesn’t hide his suspicion of you. Isaac, the one riding alone, is white with sandy hair and a charming smirk, and he’s got the build of someone who had recently been gawky and angular but finally filled out. The entire pack is hot, and this is a problem.

“Down boy,” Dirk teases from right behind you. Years of this bullshit have trained you not to jump when he sneaks up on you. Instead, you elbow him in the stomach.

You open the door wider and step aside. “Come on in,” you tell them. Dirk also steps aside but holds his sword at an angle where it’s not likely to go unnoticed. Scott eyes the sword, then Dirk, then the sword. He does not step forward.

Stiles, on the other hand, pushes right through with an exasperated groan. “See? I told you they were all crazy.” He stops abruptly just a few steps inside, turns slowly toward the massive wizard statue, and then looks up. Roxy cheerfully waves at him and twists to the side to place her empty plate on Zazzerpan’s crystal ball. “Though I have to admit that I did not predict _this_ level of insanity.”

Rose puts her knitting aside in the eldritch princess’s lap, stands, brushes the lint off her lap and fur off her butt, and goes to greet the werewolves that are finally gathering in behind Stiles while eying the place with the usual dubious and confused suspicion of people who have never met a Lalonde before. “Hello, I’m Rose Lalonde,” she greets them with perfect politeness. “I welcome you to my home. I believe some of you have already met my aunt, Roxy Lalonde.” She gestures to Roxy who, again, solutes with her gun. “And also my brother, Dave Strider.” She gestures to you. “And this is my half-brother, Dirk Strider.” She gestures to Dirk who, at some point, had moved to the couch.

Again, Scott introduces himself, Stiles, Erica, Boyd, and Isaac. Rose shifts her weight, and you can see the way the daggers tucked into the folds of her jacket weigh it down, but you’re not sure the others pick up on such a subtle signal. Her tone, though, is dangerous enough, smooth and sharp like ice cream sprinkled with broken glass. “Please, make yourselves at home,” she says. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, that’s fine,” Boyd says, not taking his eyes off of Roxy. Dirk is smirking at that. She might be the most dangerous in your family where skill is concerned, but it’s Dirk they need to keep happy.

“Wouldn’t want to put you out,” Stiles snorts, still taking in the ludicrous decor.

“Well, then,” Rose says. She gestures to the couch and chairs. “May we begin?”


	6. Chapter 6

“Okay, so I’ve designed this in such a way that neither party should feel pressured or interrogated,” Rose informs the group gathered awkwardly in her living room. She gestures to the coffee table in front of the U-shaped couch, by which had been set two velvet pillows of an ugly blue-gray color that was probably actually purple, given her tastes. “Dave and Scott will sit across from each other at the table. Each will be allowed one question to the other, which will be answered, and then it is the other’s turn. They will keep trading questions in this manner until both decide to conclude or change methodology. The rest of us will not participate in any way, but rather observe. The exception to this is an answerer temporarily calling on someone else to answer because the question happens to be more relevant to their own experience.”

Erica and Isaac trade confused glances, having understood none of that. “What Wordy McBlabberson means is that to keep shit fair and unstrifed, this interview is between Scott and me unless we both agree to involve y’all,” you translate. “Clear?”

Erica throws up her hands in frustration. “Then why did we even come here?” she demands. But, snickering, Boyd just pulls her over to take a seat at the couch, telling her it’s fine and they might find out something interesting. She calls him a nerd but sits anyway. On his lap. There is a shitton of couch available, and she is determined to use none of it. Based on the way he doesn’t react other than to adjust her position slightly, she probably does this a lot. Isaac sits next to them despite the PDA, and Stiles sits as far from them as possible without being on the Strilonde side of the couch, putting Becquerel and the eldritch princess between himself and the pack. That’s… interesting.

Scott sits cross-legged on the velvet cushion in front of the coffee table. He smiles up at you. Jesus Fuck, stop being hot. With a grunt, you drop to the cushion at the other side, sprawling as much as the space allows and setting your broadsword next to you. “Well, you’re the guest. I guess you go first,” you tell him.

“What pack are you with?” Scott asks without hesitation.

Ouch. First blow right away. You shrug, pretending it doesn’t bother you. “No fucking clue,” you tell him. “Let me know if you figure that shit out.”

“Oh god, not again,” Stiles grumbles, dropping his face into his hands. Dirk gives him a curious glance, but Erica squirms half off Boyd’s lap just so she can kick Stiles and tell him no one wants to hear his opinions. Boyd rolls his eyes and tells her to chill.

Your turn. So many questions. What the hell are you supposed to ask first? You glance across the table to this alpha, the only clue you’ve had so far, and you remember what the Harleys told you. “So, if you’re asking that, then you don’t know who bit me?”

The pity that blossoms on his face is so sincere and intense that your pride forces you to look away. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, man. We had no idea you were here. We don’t really know much of anything about other local wolf packs. All we knew was that the Ampora and Peixes murders _sounded_ like werewolf attacks, so we went to the woods to look for clues that cops might not see. We just happened to trip over you.” He runs a hand through his hair and says, “So… you’re new?”

“Was bit the same night Ampora was murdered,” you tell him. “’Radia and I were vulturing. Looking for dead animals and shit.”

Stiles kicks Scott lightly in the ribs. “Hey, give me your phone,” he says. “I’m gonna text Derek for you.”

Grumbling, Scott leans to the side to pull his phone out of his ass pocket. Isaac balks, “You don’t really think this is Peter somehow, do you? He was _cremated_.”

“Doesn’t hurt to check,” Stiles says, and he takes the phone from Scott.

Well, that provides your next question. “Who’s Peter?”

Scott fidgets and looks away. You can tell he’s considering not answering. Just when you’re starting to consider changing your question, he answers, “He bit me. He was a survivor of a werewolf family that was murdered. His niece, Laura, eventually became an alpha and came back to town. So he murdered her for the power. Stiles and I were in the woods after her body was found, and he attacked and bit me. And then he set about tracking down and murdering everyone that had participated in attacking his family, all the while using me to distract and attack the hunters.”

Your stomach hurts.

Stiles kicks Scott again to get his attention and hands him back the phone. “Derek says he’s absolutely certain that those are Peter’s ashes in the urn, and also that he can tell when I’m the one texting because you’re not that rude.”

Scott blinks at the phone. “You were rude to him when asking for information?”

“You’re nice to him?” Stiles counters.

“It’s your turn,” you remind him.

“Hold a sec,” Dirk grumbles. “Rose, you got anything in the kitchen to bribe a dog with?”

She blinks at him. “We have some bacon. Why?” she asks, but is answered by the way Becquerel immediately perks up to attention.

“The Harleys still aren’t answering,” he says, and Bec immediately sits down again. “Oh, come on!”

“Wait, are you talking about him?” Boyd asks, pointing to Bec. “Because… that is not a dog.”

Stiles quickly backs away into Rose. “What, it’s not? What is it?”

“It’s a werewolf, dipshit,” Erica says, rolling her eyes.

Scott reaches over and presents his palm to Bec before scritching his head, totally not minding the fact that Bec is apparently a person. “Yeah, it’s weird, though,” he says. “He’s a beta. Only the most powerful alphas can do a full transformation, though. Or at least that’s what I was told.”

Rose puts her chin on her hand and hums. “Hm, maybe that’s why we never see him in any other form? Perhaps he’s stuck? Perhaps this is related to why they won’t talk about their family or who their alpha is?”

“You know another pack?” asks Scott. He turns back to you. “You can count that as my question.”

“Please allow me to answer it though,” Rose says quickly. “Yes, after Dave was bit, friends of ours quickly recognized him as a fledgling werewolf and identified themselves as born werewolves. They have been as helpful as possible, but they also consider privacy their only guarantee of safety, and for that reason, I’d like to avoid revealing too much identifying information, if you don’t mind.”

“Brb, I’ve finally got John,” Dirk says, and he gets up to wander off, but Bec starts growling at him. He stops, considers Bec, and sits down. Bec immediately relaxes. “Okay, that’s weird. Lassie, why are you keeping us in the well?”

Bec just goes back to relaxing on the floor. Curious, Isaac stands and starts to move away. Bec does nothing. Rose does the same, and, though Bec sits up to watch where she goes, does not growl at her. “Urg, ask him why his dog-person is so creepy,” you tell Dirk.

“Yeah, already on it.”

Erica is looking at him sideways. “Is that what the weird glowy Star Trek glasses are for?” she asks.

“It’s Dave’s turn for questions,” Dirk replies, crossing his arms and pressing his back into the couch. Above him, Roxy snorts in amusement. 

You shrug. “So, what do you know about the murders?” you ask.

Scott shrugs back. “Basically, just what your dad told Stiles’s dad and what we said in the forest,” he tells you. “Sixteen Peixes girls in twenty years, all within your county if not Fairvale itself, but if you take in the three other families with drowned girls, it’s…” He glances to Stiles for confirmation. “Seventy?”

“Seventy-one girls in eighty-three years,” says Stiles. “Numbers one through seventy were all found with salt water in their lungs but nowhere near salt water. Number seventy-one was maimed. And Cronus is the first related guy to die young.”

“Dave…” Dirk starts to say, but you gesture for him to shut up.

“Ampora is related to Peixes?” you press.

Stiles looks at you funny. “According to your dad, the family is split down gender lines. You didn’t know?”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Dave doesn’t pay a lot of attention. Most people know.”

You make a face. “But, I thought Eridan had a crush on Feferi?” you say.

Rose snickers. “He does,” she says.

“Eeeeeugh.”

“Dave, I need to talk to you,” says Dirk. He reaches forward and tugs at your shoulder, but you push him off.

“Dude, just give me one more question. We’re on to something,” you tell him. “What are the names of the other families you found?”

Again, Scott looks to Stiles, and Stiles sits back again, trying to remember. “Uh… Muir was one…”

“Dave, Jake’s been shot.”

Your whole body goes cold. Everyone’s attention is now on Dirk, but you can’t turn to face him. You’re stuck, somehow, brain playing that line on repeat over and over and over like the next time it will make sense.

“He was one of four officers responding to a call of shots fired in the west district,” he tells you. “Turned out to be some kind of turf war. Snowman and some goons that are probably Felt had attacked a house that turns out to have belonged to Droog under another name. John agrees with the hypothesis that _he_ ” Dirk jabs an accusing finger toward Bec who is now up again and uncomfortably close to you, watching you for some reason. “is trying to make sure we don’t stick our nose in it while the situation’s still dangerous.”

By the end of that little spiel, you have already thawed, and now your pulse is thundering in your ears, you can’t breathe. “Is it still happening?” you demand. “Did anyone die? How bad is Jake? Christ, was Aradia there? I have to call her. Oh god, what about Bro? I－” And that’s when Becquerel flops across your lap. “What the fuck?! No, get off!” You shove at him, but he’s as floppy as a corpse and makes no move other than to look up at you.

“He’s trying to calm you down,” says Scott. There’s a small smile playing at the edge of his lips as he watches the monstrous dog-man, but he, like basically everyone else in the room, has gone subdued with confusion and grief. He reaches across the table to you. “Here, give me your hand.”

You flinch back. “What? Why?”

His smile turns a little sadder, but he persists. “Please, just trust me?” he asks.

You do not trust him at all, but if it gets this fucking dog off your lap, you’ll do anything. You give him your hand.

He closes his eyes and concentrates. You feel… something. It’s hard to describe. It’s like all your panicked energy is flowing out through your skin into his. “This is something I figured out how to do as a beta, but it’s even easier as an alpha,” he explains. “With people, I’ve only ever used it to take physical pain, but in dogs sometimes I can use it to calm them down, so I thought I’d try. Does it help? Are you okay?”

You swallow. “Uh, yeah, sure.” You pull your hand away and look down at Bec. “Okay, you can get up now. I’m chill.” Bec does not move. Urg. “My phone is in my pocket, and I really need to call Aradia.” Bec moves just enough to allow you to get into your pocket. “You’re a pervert,” you accuse, but Bec ignores you.

You pull out your phone and bring up Pesterchum. You try to swallow you nerves, not wanting to panic again lest someone do weird magics to you again. “She’s not online.” You switch to your actual texting app, and bring up her number.

yo radia you okay

“Is anyone actually on one of their Trollian boards?” you ask. You drop your phone on the table so that you can easily reach it again if she replies.

“I am,” Roxy says from above you. “But I didn’t actually bring my laptop up here, and Dirk’ll flip his shit if I give up my position.”

“It’s fine,” says Dirk. “I’m getting details from Mituna. He doesn’t think any of the crew were actually at the house. Apparently, there’s a rumor going around that the crew’s hiding Eridan Ampora, and that’s why Snowman struck.”

“ _Snowman_ wants Eridan?” you repeat, incredulous. “What the fuck for?”

“Mituna’s being cagey, but apparently Eridan stole something from the Peixes very recently, which basically solidifies the theory I was trying to ask Jake about,” he says. He nods to Scott. “You can daisy-chain the power, can’t you? Alpha A is killed by Beta B, who becomes Alpha B, who’s killed by Beta C, who becomes Alpha C, and so on and so on ad infinitum.”

Scott scratches his head. “Uh, yeah, I guess? I’ve never heard anything about limits on it,” he says. “You don’t really _have_ to kill, though. That’s just… usually what happens. I think.”

Dirk nods. “So Bro’s thinking that Maya and Cronus were killed differently from the previous 15 girls because the killer or killers changed their pattern,” he says. “But what if it’s just a different person with a different motive that just happened to kill someone who would’ve been a serial killer’s target anyway?”

Rose sits up. “You think Maya was an alpha before Cronus?”

Dirk nods. “I think Cronus killed Maya for it, came back to get his brother, and for whatever reason Eridan killed Cronus and tried to cover his tracks by making it look like a bear attack, and then he ran for it and ran smack into you, a convenient body to beta and make a distraction out of.”

You stare at him, mouth hanging open. “You think _Eridan_ is my alpha???” Your voice hits a particularly high note with that one.

Dirk nods. “He took something from a Peixes that they desperately want back or revenge for. We know there are other born werewolves in town but not who they are. We know Feferi and Meenah are looking for Eridan and that Eridan was checking on Feferi, _and_ that Eridan attempted to vaguely warn you about something. We know that Eridan, like you, is friends with Crew kids. We know that despite growing evidence that he is in a shitload of trouble, he has not actually left town yet, either because there’s still something to do here or, I’m guessing, he'd just anchored himself when he made you his beta. He probably _can’t_ leave without you.”

You glance to Scott for confirmation. He scowls but nods. “If your alpha only has one beta, you, then he probably won’t leave without you. Not if the power is important to him. Without a pack, he’d quickly drain back down to beta and, eventually, omega.”

Eridan.

Eridan is your alpha.

Your head hits the desk, and you groan. “Just fucking kill me now.”


	7. Chapter 7

You talk a while longer, giving up every scrap of evidence that Sheriff Stilinski might want. After some goading, Dirk even gives up a copy of the shit Roxy nabbed from Bro’s computer last night (or “Item #3” as your group had taken to referring to it). In trade, Scott tells you everything he knows about being a werewolf, which, unfortunately isn’t a hell of a lot more than you know since he’s had to teach himself most everything. But he shows you how to take pain, Dirk giving no shits about slicing up his hand for science, and talks to you about chemosignals and eye colors. As it turns out, none of them had known about the sugar thing ("I am going to kill Derek," Isaac groans. "I thought I had IBS!"), and Scott had always been red/green colorblind and had therefore had no idea there was usually a change in color sight until you said so and his pack confirmed it. At no point does Roxy climb down off of Zazzerpan, but you’re starting to think that she just likes being up there. Or possibly you have a “cat in a tree” situation that she hasn’t copped up to yet.

The second your lap feels cold, you look around and realize Bec is gone. You’re immediately on your feet. “Okay, nice meeting you! Roxy drive me to the hospital!” Behind you, Rose objects, but you’re already out the door, and Dirk almost follows at your heels before realizing that he cannot abandon Rose to the company of unknown werewolves no matter how nice they’ve been so far. You, however, completely trust Rose to stab them all through the eye sockets if she needs to.

Roxy is laughing as she catches up and throws herself into the driver’s seat. You try to smile back, try to absorb her confidence, but your stomach has twisted itself into knots upon knots upon knots and you’ll probably never digest anything ever again and that is probably one of the lamest ways to die.

Aradia still hasn’t answered.

You do a mental checklist of Crew kids as Roxy drives. Droog: Aradia. You have her trollhandle and phone number, but she is answering neither. Slick: Karkat and Kankri. You only have Karkat’s trollhandle, and it’s marked away. You’re not worried about Kankri, because he started publicly denouncing the Midnight Crew ages ago. Deuce: Captor twins. Mituna is accounted for. Sollux isn’t, but Mituna isn’t worried, and Mituna worries about most things, so that means Sollux is probably fine. The Nitrams moved out the second Rufioh turned 18, but Tavros could still be hanging around his semi-relations. You have his trollhandle, too, but it is also marked away.

The second Roxy slows down to pull into the front parking lot, you’re out of the car. You race across stripes of asphalt and greenery, pausing only for oncoming traffic, and burst through the door and head toward the emergency room. You probably should not still have your sword with you, but luckily there’s already so much commotion no one seems to notice.

Before you’re even properly in the waiting area, you can hear Kanaya Maryam swearing up a storm. Apparently, she is going to “motherfucking eat a bitch,” and, from her tone, you don’t think she means the fun way. There’s a lot of other commotion as well, but you think you can hear Aradia laughing.

You heard wrong. On entrance, you realize that it is not Kanaya, but her much older sister Porrim, whom you’ve always suspected to be her “sister” the way Bro is your “brother.” Covered in tattoos and very little clothing, Porrim has always been surprisingly classy, even more so than her sister, so it’s kind of a shock to see her on the floor of the emergency waiting room with Bro’s knee on her spine as he tries to wrestle her into handcuffs. Kankri Vantas stands nearby wringing his hands and trying to excuse her behavior while simultaneously begging her to submit. Your eyes scan the room for Aradia, but you’d misidentified that voice as well, and your stomach forms another knot.

The Handmaid of Hell is a woman you almost never see, that no one ever sees, whose real name you’re not even sure of. She’s dressed in an elaborate and perfectly untouched kimono outfit, complete with traditional shoes and jewelry and makeup, and she is smirking evilly as she mocks Porrim. Bro shouts over his shoulder for her to shut the fuck up, and she just mocks him too. Suddenly, you understand what Scott was saying about chemosignals because pure fear is falling off Kankri in waves. You return your attention to him, and, while he continues to plead Porrim’s good behavior, he keeps making aborted little jerks like he’s trying not to glance in the direction of the Handmaid. It’s her he’s scared of. Really, _really_ scared of.

Bro finally wrestles the cuffs on Porrim, and she calls him a tool of the kyriarchy, whatever the hell that is. The Handmaid of Hell laughs with a sound like knives in your ears and taunts them, “He’s your tool, painted bitch? Go ride him to the stable where you both belong!” Yeeeeah, Aradia definitely got her manners from Droog, and her sister Damara definitely didn’t.

Bro wrenches Porrim probably a little too hard (but does get her standing) and turns to the Handmaid, jabbing a finger into her chest. His skin is too dark to show bruising, but one of them must have given him a nasty knock because his lower lip is swelling a little on one side. Actually, his jaw’s swelling a little too. “Your kid isn’t fucking here, Megido, and you wouldn’t have the rights to see her if she was, so go the fuck home.”

She crosses her arms haughtily. Beside Bro, Kankri is whispering something to Porrim that seems to be getting her to shut up, but she’s still seething, and Bro’s gripping her upper arm hard enough to bruise. Megido replies, “It was her sperm-shooter’s house that was attacked. Obviously, she safe nowhere but with her mother.”

“It was your girlfriend that hit it!” Bro rages.

Again, she laughs. “Yes, give me more defamation in front of witnesses, you dog-sucking whore.”

Bro growls but apparently decides to let this one go. If Aradia isn’t in the hospital, theHandmaid will leave eventually. But you kinda wonder why she suddenly cares about Aradia when she was the one that forced Droog to take custody in the first place.

Bro snaps at Kankri to get out of the fucking way before he’s arrested too and starts for the door, stopping again when he sees you there. With an angry groan, he storms toward you, hauling Porrim along by her upper arm, then grabs you by the ear to pull you out of the hospital as well. “For fuck’s sake, Dave, I expect this kind of idiocy from your brother, but don’t you know goddamn better than to stick your nose in criminal business?”

You twist out of his grip. Grabbing the ear hurts like fuck, but it’s not exactly a solid handhold. “I wanted to see if any of my friends had been hurt,” you insist. You lift your phone to show him your chumroll. “None of them are answering.”

“Jesus Christ, get better friends,” he growls. He keeps storming toward the parking garage at the side, and you follow. If Roxy doesn’t follow you into the hospital and get the story from someone there, you can message her where you went soon.

“Excuse me for being of the opinion that people shouldn’t be judged by what kind of asshat their parental guardian is,” you snarl, and Porrim snickers.

He has just slammed through the doors to the parking garage when he turns to you, snarling, “Look here, you little shit.” But then he stops, something having caught his eye. “The fuck?”

You turn to follow his gaze, and he’s already storming off again. You follow. There, in one of the closest rows, is his police cruiser. And standing there with his arms impatiently crossed, leaning his ass against the car, is Deputy Jake Harley in a t-shirt and jeans. (How much blood was on his uniform?) “Harley! Get your bleeding ass back in the hospital where it belongs!” Bro is downright yelling now. You’re kind of worried about his arteries.

“Wasn’t my ass that was shot, sir,” he says, but he sounds tired. He gives you a curious glance but keeps talking to Bro. “And where I _was_ shot was just a graze. Just happened to nick in a bad way.”

“You were _spitting blood_ ,” Bro argues. He pulls Porrim to a stop at the passenger door of the cruiser but doesn’t yet bother putting her in.

“Yeah, weird, huh?” Jake lies, and you have to put a hand over your mouth to keep from laughing at how he just doesn’t even bother trying to convince Bro of a different story, just blowing it off instead. You jerk your hand back down when Bro turns to you with a suspicious look.

He returns his attention to his favorite deputy. “Okay, show me,” he says.

Jake blinks, surprised. “That would be unprofessional, sir,” he says.

“I don’t fucking care!” Bro snarls. “Either prove to me there’s no wound or go back in the hospital where you fucking belong!”

Jake hesitates but lifts up his t-shirt. There’s a bright red mark there on the left side of his abdomen from a shallow but painful-looking wound. If it was really a graze, it would be a line instead of a dot, especially as flat as Jake’s abs are (this is not a thing you needed to know), and Bro definitely knows that. But Bro has no other explanation for why Jake isn’t currently sporting a massive gaping hole unless he’s willing to embrace the supernatural.

Bro stares at the wound. His mouth works a couple times as he almost announces his thoughts but then decides against it. You hold your breath. Jake smells like nervous energy. Eventually, he pulls his shirt back down because he figures Bro has gotten a good enough look now. Bro’s eyes travel back up to Jake’s face, trying to measure his expression.

Then he punches Jake right where the wound is. “OW! FUCK!” Jake cries, doubling over.

“Just checking,” Bro grumbles. He pulls open the passenger door and presses down on Porrim’s head in the universal cop signal of ‘now you sit.’ “Where is your car?” he asks Jake. He slams the door closed as soon as Porrim is in her seat.

Jake, still recovering from the punch but apparently not bleeding, blushes and pushes his hair back. “I, uh, guess it’s at the scene, sir?”

“Get in the car, and I’ll take you back to the station,” Bro says, climbing into the driver’s side. “You’re so healthy, then I’ve got work for you. Dave, go home!” He doesn’t even look at you to yell that at you.

With a sigh, you walk out of view, then duck behind a car and concentrate on your superhearing. Werewolf powers, go! “Sir?” Jake is asking.

“There wasn’t anyone at the house, but Felt obviously thinks that the Crew is hiding Ampora. Which, I guess is a theory, since some of them are about the same age. No one’s named them as friends though; apparently Ampora hasn't got any. But Maryam here thinks the whole thing was a distraction while the Felt grabbed as many Crew kids as possible to force a trade. Megido showing up at the hospital looking for Aradia tells me maybe she’s not wrong, and Dave just showed me a chumlist full of away messages. I need you and A.R. to track these kids down, make sure they’re safe, make sure they _stay_ safe. If Ampora is found, bring him in as quickly and quietly as possible. Do _not_ radio it in.”

“ _Kanaya_ isn’t _Crew_ ,” Porrim snarls. “They’re not after _Crew_ _kids_ ; they’re after _Speaker kids_. You want to check on the Leijon sisters, too.”

“Okay, sure,” Bro grunts, and you can’t tell if he’s actually listening to her or not.

Oh, hey, turns out your stomach wasn’t done with all that macrame it’s been up to. It seems that Aradia still might not be safe, but you know how to get your answers. Bro isn’t operating with the same information you are: years of high school drama and who’s-friends-with-who that narrows the suspect pool drastically. You wait for the cruiser to leave, then you run back inside as fast as you can. Please still be there. Please still be there.

Neither Megido nor Kankri are still in the waiting room. Shit shit shit shit.

“Hey, you can’t have that in here!” a security guard cries, pointing to the broadsword still strapped to your hip.

You put your hands up and back out. “You are absolutely right, sir. Let me go take it back to my car.” You run back out toward the main entrance.

There, thank fucking god, is Kankri, hands in his pockets, moping his way back to his car. Roxy is sitting on the hood of her Cadillac, blowing bubble gum, and waves at you. You wave back then call, “Hey, Vantas! Hold up!”

He turns to you, hand up to block the sun from his eyes, and glowers. “Have I not been harassed by enough Striders today?” he asks as you catch up with him in the parking lot.

You snort. “Look, you don’t seem like the type to encounter Bro much, but I can tell you that whatever happened in there, he’d have let Porrim off with a warning if she hadn’t slugged him,” you tell him.

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure he is definitely not the sort to abuse his powers of authority and control,” he grumbles, but you can tell he knows you’re right. He has the same mannerisms as his little brother, only with an iron rod up his ass instead of a hornet’s nest. “Was there a point to you stopping me?” He is completely unaware of the fact that Roxy has snuck up behind him just in case she’s needed.

“Yeah, where’s Karkat?” you ask.

Kankri sniffs. “If you are truly friends, then I’m certain that he would inform you of--.”

“Cut the crap, Kankri,” you interrupt. “None of the Crew kids are allowed to invite friends over for _obvious fucking reasons_ , all legal records connected to abandoned property or P.O. Boxes. And, by the way, I _know_ that you remember that it was _Bro_ who has chewed out the school office every single fucking year to make sure all seven of you got an education despite your lack of documentation. So you fucking owe him some slack, I think.

“What I also know is that Porrim is insisting that the Leijons be checked on and that the hit on Droog’s place was a distraction, which means she has a reason for thinking it’s not the Crew themselves that are being targeted. But what you and I know that the cops don’t and that the Felt don’t is that Ampora doesn’t have friends with Leijons, Captors, Megidos, hell _anyone_. There is but one dude in this universe that can stand his company on a daily basis, and you’re going to take me to him.”

Kankri huffs. “So that you can call it in to your progenitor and get my brother caught in the middle of yet another bloody battle he is far too young for?”

“So I can find out what it takes to make Eridan leave,” you say. It’s a kind of vague claim, but you’re not sure how much Kankri knows. You’re not even sure Dirk’s guess about Eridan is right. Sure, it fits, but it fits because you’ve got more conjecture than evidence at this point. But Karkat is your friend, too. Maybe not a close one, but you can stand him longer than most can. If you can’t talk reason into Eridan, you’re fairly confident you can talk some into Karkat.

Kankri watches you carefully through narrowed eyes. Finally, he says, “Fine.”

“Sweet!” Roxy cries behind him, making him jump about a foot in the air. “I’ll drive!”


	8. Chapter 8

The route out of Fairvale is pretty straightforward. Kankri can’t hide roads you’re familiar with. But as soon as you hit the boonies, he starts taking you on loopty-loops. As Roxy gets more and more confused and you start doubting if this particular stretch even really qualifies as a road, you realize that Karkat is probably not actually in your school district. Furthermore, Bro probably knows this, but decided to keep the Crew kids where he could keep an eye on them _and_ ensure them an education. He might be a lazy motherfucker, but he’s not stupid by any means.

He is so gonna find you out. You’re doomed. You’ll be grounded ’til you’re fifty if you’re lucky.

“Dude, I get the point, but I do _not_ see gas stations around here, and I’d like to not be stranded where the mafia lives if that’s okay with you?” Roxy snips. From the way she’s leaning her elbow on the window, you can guess that sobriety is finally starting to kick in with side effects.

Kankri huffs. “The Midnight Crew are a four-person partnership focused on robbery and extortion. A ‘mafia’ necessitates a much larger organization. My father may be a reckless criminal, but let’s not overstate his accomplishments. Left turn there.”

Roxy turns onto the road he points to. It’s another dirt road, and it plunges you into darkness so quickly that you’re briefly wondering if you’ve gone into the Twilight Zone. The path doesn’t narrow much, though, and you see occasional flashes of houses in the trees, and Rod Sterling fails to appear and start narrating your life. “Right here,” says Kankri, and you go down an even darker road, onto a one car lane. You’re kind of doomed if anyone comes up the other way too fast. You remind Roxy to turn her lights on.

“Left again onto the driveway,” he finally says, and Roxy turns onto a path you completely did not see existing, but you manage not to yelp much. You catch a hint of a smirk on Kankri’s face in the mirror.

Roxy rolls to a stop at a small-ass cabin. There’s no car parked there, but the lights are on. It’s maybe slightly bigger than a child’s playhouse or your apartment. Maybe a couple rooms, a toilet, and half a kitchen, you'd bet. It’s definitely a safehouse and not their primary residence. So if Kankri knows which safehouse they’re at, he must still be in contact with at least his brother, if not other members of their criminal “family,” despite what he has repeatedly told Bro.

A shadow darts across one window so fast it could almost have been a trick of light. Someone has skills. Not enough of them, but skills all the same. “If you want to talk to Karkat, you must stay right next to me on approach of the house,” Kankri instructs. “Do not attempt to get ahead of me. Do not fall behind or retreat without my expressed command. Keep your body language friendly. Leave your weapons in the car. If anyone is watching this house, you don’t want to give them a reason to shoot you.”

“Has Slick really ever killed someone?” Roxy asks, her tone more curious than judgemental, evaluating the true danger of the situation. Instead of answering, Kankri just huffs again and gets out of the car.

You don’t like it, but you’re not stupid enough to test this particular boundary. You unclasp your sword hilt from your belt and leave it on the car seat as you exit. Roxy gets out of the car and pulls a her pistol out of the shoulder holster under her jacket and tosses it onto the seat that Kankri had vacated. She then braces her right foot against the side of the car and pulls out a boot knife from her pant leg, and tosses it in the seat as well. Then she takes off her heals and tosses them inside, closing the door. “Okay, ready,” she says.

Kankri raises a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Excuse me if this is an impolite request, but may I inquire as to why you have taken your shoes off?”

She just gives him a bemused smile. “You said no weapons,” she reminds him.

“I－”

“Let it go,” you tell him. “Come on. It’d be awesome if we can do this before Slick shows up.”

With an irritated huff, Kankri leads the way up the front path to the door. You and Roxy are careful to stay right next to him. He knocks loudly on the door, and you only then realize how eerily, inappropriately quiet the dark forest is. How eerily, inappropriately dark it is despite being somewhere around noon. “Karkat, open up, it’s me,” Kankri whines loudly.

After a few seconds the door squeaks open just enough to show a sliver of Karkat’s hostile face. “Yeah, and since when do you drive a－ Dave?” He opens the door wider for a better look. He’s holding something in his hand that is probably a weapon but is mostly behind the door. “And Roxy? That explains your ridiculous car, but what in the ass-chafing hell do you think you’re doing here?”

“Eloquent as ever, Karkat,” Kankri sniffs as he pushes past him and into the house. You were right. You see a total of two doors and, in the back corner, a little alcove with a microwave and fridge. The main area is just big enough for a threadbare futon and an old CRT TV with a couple old Nintendos stacked next to it with a stack of yellowing novels on top of that, though one very obviously doesn't match the others. Living the high life.

“Kankri, I’m serious!” Karkat snarls. When he turns to yell at his brother, you see that he’s holding an actual goddamn sickle, and you’re kind of wondering what Karkat’s doing mowing grass like it’s the 1200s when you realize that ir has been sharpened to a gleam. This thing has never been intended for anything as crude as shortening flora, and you suddenly realize how a four-person partnership can gain the reputation of a mafia as you picture the ease with which those things could sever every artery in your neck in half a second. “If Dad finds out anyone’s been here － much less _catches_ them here － he’ll blow a gasket.”

Kankri shrugs, faux casual, but you can see the tension in the way he holds his shoulders. “Then tell them where Ampora is.”

Karkat startles, shoots a betrayed look to you, still standing in the doorway with your back to the dark forest like a chump. “You too?” he demands. “Do you have any idea what we’ve been through today?”

“Do you have any idea what _we’ve_ been through?!” you counter, angrier than you intended. “Jake was shot today, you know!” You conveniently leave out that Jake’s passing it off as a graze and is already back to work and that this is not remotely the reason that you have sought out Karkat and Eridan. Karkat glances away guiltily, so you push. “Look, if he comes with me, I’ll make sure he gets into safe hands. Or he can get the hell out of dodge; I don’t care which. But if he keeps sticking around, giving Peixes something to look for, something to fight for, then he’s just going to keep getting more people killed. Your side, their side, my side, innocent people that have fuck all to do with anything. We cannot afford the war he’s starting.”

Karkat sighs. “He’s not here,” he says. “If I see him again, I’ll pass on the message, okay? Now go.”

“Why are you even protecting him?” Kankri wonders. “After all his people have done?”

Wow, nothing puts your walls back up faster than a comment from your brother, and it seems the Vantases are no different. “You wanna talk about deaths of innocent people, dickstain?” Karkat seethes. “Let’s talk about what happens to people when they get wrapped up in this shitty-ass cult of yours.”

“Let’s not,” comes a voice like gravel behind you, stinking of cigarettes, and the only thing that keeps you from jumping a foot straight into the air is the sensation of a cold knife edge on the back of your neck. Bad werewolf senses! Bad! How the hell did you not know he’d arrived? “Someone throw a party and forget to invite the goddamn homeowner?” Slick demands.

“Wait, Dad, don’t,” Karkat pleads, looking suddenly much paler. Awe, he cares. Or maybe he’s just grossed out by blood? Eh, you’ll take any reason right now.

Roxy, god bless her, turns to him at just the right speed that he isn’t startled and produces from you-don’t-know-where-the-hell a box of Thin Mints and chirps, “Hello, sir! Would you like to buy a box of Girl Scout Cookies?”

The Vantases stare at her with pure horror. You smirk. At least if Spades Slick guts you both, you can go to hell with the stupidest fucking story ever.

Shockingly, the knife comes off your neck, and you immediately turn with your hands up. You might’ve peed a little. Slick uses the knife to gesture toward Roxy's car, which now has Aradia’s car parked next to it. Aradia waves at you cheerily. So that’s why he didn’t just shoot you on sight. You are going to give her everything you own. “Get the fuck out, and don’t ever seek us out again,” he says.

“Yes, sir!” You grab Roxy’s wrist and run away, pulling her toward her car. Snickering, she tosses the box to Aradia so she can dig her keys back out of her pocket and get in.

Aradia’s laughing at you. “There’s a gas station on Oak,” she informs you. “You can finish peeing there!”

* * *

Ten minutes later, you’re still in the boonies. “Aw, frick, I really thought this would take us to the main highway,” Roxy says. “Dave, I don’t suppose you have a compass app, do you?” She squints out the windshield at more dirt road and a barn you think you’ve passed before. Or maybe all barns look alike; what do you know of barns? “At least if we’re heading in one direction, we’re less likely to end up back at Slick’s.”

“Jesus, I thought you were retracing the way we took here,” you say, pulling out your phone. “Why don’t you just use GPS?”

She snorts. “Sure, Dave, let’s try that.”

You bring up your mapping app on your phone. It takes it forever to load and then… “Uh, according to this, we’re about to drive into a lake?”

She cackles. “Yeah, no one comes out to update the backroads much,” she tells you. “And if the Crew’s living out here, I bet they’ve had Mituna and Sollux hack the databases. Kankri wouldn’t have had us drive in circles if he thought there was a chance we could just use GPS to get back.”

“True,” you admit. “I guess at least the compass is probably right?” You zoom out a bit. “Okay, I think we want to head southeast, so you’ll want to make a right soon.” You stretch forward to lock your phone into the holder on her dash so she can see which direction she’s heading even if the roadmap is wrong.

“Hey, is my gun still over there?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah.” You pick it up out of the floor, make sure the safety is on (which is about all you know how to do with guns), and hand it to her.

She immediately flicks the safety off with practiced ease and puts it in the pocket under the radio where it’s slightly out of sight but easily reachable, and tells you, “You should get in the floor just in case.”

“Wait, what?” You look at her and see she’s checking the mirrors more than she’s checking the road in front of her. You turn to look behind you. There’s someone on a motorcycle right behind you. Oops, make that two some－ three someones. Fuck, this is probably not a coincidence. The longer you stare, the more they multiply.

“There’s eight in total,” she tells you. “Also my windows aren’t tinted, so seriously, get down and stop being an easy target, please?”

You fucking hate hiding, but you know she’s right. You shove your hand down beside the seat and press the button to slide the seat back. As soon as it’s as far as it will go, you pull your knees up and push your ass off the seat and try to hunch down as much as possible. “What about you?”

“I don’t think it’s me they’re looking for,” says Roxy.

“What makes you say that?”

“You said Serkets and Pyropes are werewolf killers, right?” she says. “Okay, so I’ve been doing lots of research over the past day, and like, Pyropes are about exactly as radical as we already knew. But Serkets are wild, man. Probably, Bro coulda said some of this, but with keeping him out of the loop, there’s no way I can ask about Serkets without him wanting to know why. Anyway, they’re a big family. Not many kids per a household, really, but all the distant cousins and such keep tight. They…” She scowls, slows her speed a little, and hugs the shoulder of the road. “Details later, but they like the number eight. There’s eight people in this group. We suspect Vriska mighta saw you, so...”

She waves at someone through the window, and you promptly try to squeeze yourself as small and unseen as possible. It's a lucky thing expensive cars have so much leg space. It’s still a little dark under trees, so it’s possible they didn’t see you looking back before. “Hi, yes, I see you, please pass by,” she says mostly to herself as she continues gesturing.

You can hear the motorcycles have surrounded her on three sides now. That’s why she’s hugging the shoulder. She’s giving you an escape. You are super fucking tired of being the damsel in distress.

Eventually, one of them revs their engine and motors off into the distance. Another one follows, and another, and the pack slowly breaks away to leave you alone. “Don’t come up until I tell you to,” she warns.

The last few break away as a group, and don’t quite speed up. Instead they get in front of her first. “What is－?”

**WHUMP**!

_SCREEEEEECH_!

As soon as the whatever it was hit the car, Roxy swerved and slammed the breaks. The car comes to a stop crossing both lanes of the road. The sound of motorcycles fades into the distance.

Your spine hurts where it hit the dashboard. “Ow. Roxy, you okay?”

“Stay there,” she says. She grabs her pistol and steps out of the car.

You do not stay there. You climb back into your seat, grab your broadsword from the back floorboard, and exit after her.

She’s standing in front of the car staring down at the asphalt. There’s a dead wolf at her feet. It’s had its throat slit and its eyes removed. You quickly duck back around the other side of the car to throw up.

“This… this wasn’t ever a person, right?” Roxy says. Her voice is cracked and broken. She’s definitely crying. “I mean like… this is an animal wolf, not a werewolf, right?”

You have no fucking clue. “Yeah, definitely,” you tell her. “I could tell if it wasn’t.”

“Is this who you want to be?”

You startle at that and turn to face her. “What?”

“To cure it,” she says. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, but it doesn’t help stop the sobbing. “To cure it, you have to kill Eridan. You have to do _that_ ” She gestures to the wolf. “to Eridan.”

You look away again. “No, Roxy, I don’t want that,” you say quietly. “I… I don’t know. I just…” You shake your head. “Eridan’s not my alpha anyway.”

She blinks at you. “How d’ya know?” she asks. “Just a little bit ago, you were so sure.”

“Yeah, and then we got to Slick’s house,” you tell her. “Did you see the novels by the TV?” She shakes her head. “Three bodice rippers and a book about the Seven Years’ War. Karkat is obsessed with romance, but Eridan is obsessed with history.” You shake your head. “He was there, but I smelled no werewolves. I didn’t sense my alpha. I got… nothing. Whatever he’s started, it has nothing to do with me.”

Suddenly, her arms are around you, and she’s sobbing into your shoulder. Stiffly, you pat her on the back, unsure of what else you’re supposed to do. “Uh, is that ‘yay, we’re not killing a peer’ crying or ‘shit, we’re back at square one’ crying?” you ask.

“I have no idea,” she mumbles into your shoulder as she just keeps on sobbing.

Since she’s going to be there a while, you hug her back. “Yeah. Yeah, same.”


	9. Chapter 9

Luck must be with you because, somehow, it seems that Bro has not caught word of you running afoul of both Slick and the Serkets. Roxy definitely ratted you out to Dirk, though, because only half an hour after you get home does he come into your room and take your phone from you. You’re too tired to deal with it then, but you eventually figure out that he has checked your GPS to find out where about you _might_ have run into the Serkets. He says it's to help establish where their territory is, because it seems that if you were lost it was unlikely they followed you the whole way. He also pulled all the data off it, reset it to factory default, and then took it apart to make sure the hardware was as it should be, all to make certain no one had tracked you. _That_ you were much more pissed about.

At least, you were pissed about it until he finished checking over the data he’d saved to his laptop and found some Captor-made trojans. Fuck your life. (On the plus side, he doesn’t think they’d ever accessed your location with it, but instead probably just had pranking intentions. The fact that the trojans had rarely been used showed him that they’d probably put it on the wrong phone in the first place, intending to get at him instead. So… fuck your brother’s life, you guess.)

Roxy spends the weekend alternately working on the cat-tracking chip with Dirk, sleeping off headaches on either the couch or Dirk’s bed, crying at the smallest thing, or throwing up. According to Bro, Roxy’s detox is worse than Doc’s pregnancies, though you're pretty sure he's exaggerating. You hope it doesn’t last as long. You’re honestly kind of surprised that she hasn’t just gone home yet, since she was kind of tricked into it in the first place and no one can really stop her. It seems that she’s come to her own conclusion that it’s a good idea.

Bro releases Porrim exactly twenty-four hours after her arrest with only a warning to behave herself. A few hours later, Damara Megido is in the hospital and Kanaya is back in Porrim’s custody. Porrim dropped her allegations that the Handmaid had taken her, and Kanaya would say nothing either way. Bro gives up on them after a brief rant. Brief because Dirk distracts him with a strife by mimicking his accent.

When Monday rolls around, you still have no idea who your alpha is, how any of this connects to the murders of Cronus and Maya, where the Midnight Crew comes into it, or what to do about the fact that the Serkets obviously know you’re a werewolf and are just trying to capture enough evidence to justify your murder. There is at least one thing on your ever growing list of things, however, that you know you can handle. And you head into school with an iron-will determination to do so.

“Karkat,” you greet, leaning against the locker next to his. You can hear his teeth clamp together. Ha.

“Strider,” he grumbles. “What now?”

“I just really wanted to say in person that I’m sorry for putting you in a bad place with your dad on Saturday,” you tell him honestly. “I’m really just glad you’re okay. I was really worried when Aradia wouldn’t answer her phone and all you guys were away, and I probably pushed a lot harder than I should have taking that stupid fucking risk.”

Karkat has stopped putting books in his locker. He’s just sort of standing there. Finally, he closes the door and turns to you with a skeptical expression. “I told Eridan what you said,” he says.

“Yeah?” you ask. “How’d he take it?”

Karkat shrugs. “I think he’s already been thinking about that aspect. But days of whining, and he still hasn’t come to a decision. I think Dad’s about ready to kick him out, though, especially since we've been switching houses every day.”

You raise an eyebrow at that. “Like kick out as in ‘get the fuck out of my house’ or kick out as in ‘stab you in the kidneys and leave you by the side of the road’?”

Karkat shrugs. “Honestly, who knows?” he admits. “He deserves it either way.” He turns to head to class.

Quick! Before you lose that iron will! “Uh, hey, Karkat?”

He hesitates. He still looks suspicious of you. “Yeah?”

“Just wanted to say that was a mad awesome sickle you got.” No, wrong thing. True, but wrong. Urg.

He snorts and rolls his eyes, but you can see him smirk a little. “There’s two, actually,” he says. “But I can’t hold both _and_ answer the door.”

“Makes sense,” you tell him. “Can you really use them?”

He shrugs. “Sort of? I practice a lot, but only Aradia and Kankri will spar with me, but they use long weapons, so it doesn’t really work. And Dad gives _terrible_ advice,” he complains. “He’s like ‘Just take a pointy thing and jab! It’s not rocket science!’” And you laugh because you don’t even know the man and you know that is _exactly_ what Spades Slick would say.

“Yeah, your dad is very to-the-point,” you tell him with a smirk, and you get a punch in the tit. “Ow!”

“Do _not_ start punning at me, Strider, I swear to god! I get enough of that from Feferi and Nepeta!” But, despite his protests, he’s smiling a bit. Your iron will stops rusting out on you.

You run your hand back through your hair and try out a small smile of your own to prove you’re not up to something. Well… Not something bad, anyway. “Okay, well, see, then, I was wondering if maybe like… Would you want to spar with me?” you ask. “I mean because I’ve only sparred against Bro, Dirk, and Rose, so it would be really different and a good challenge for me, and…” You shrug. “I dunno. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. Um.”

Karkat looks confused but willing to roll with it. “Yeah, sure. I mean, if you insist.” He starts to move away again, but then hesitates and glances back at you. “This isn’t about Eridan, is it?” he asks.

“Man, Eridan can fuck himself,” you tell him. “I gave my only fuck on Saturday. I am done now.”

Karkat’s smile grows a millimeter more, and he quickly ducks back into the crowd.

Yeah.

Yeah, he cares.

* * *

Bro looked up as Deputy Renaud entered his office with a small styrofoam cooler under one arm. “Uh, Renegade?” he asked, using the officer’s nickname.

Wordlessly (as he does everything), Renaud kicked the door shut behind him and approached the desk. Still giving no indication as to what the fuck he was up to, he reached into his cooler, plucked out an evidence bag, and dropped it on Bro’s desk. It was a lung. According to the evidence bag, it was Cronus Ampora’s lung.

“What the fuck?!” Bro demanded, leaning as far away from the thing as his chair would allow.

Renaud plucked out a second bag and dropped it on his desk. Another lung. Also labeled as Ampora’s. “Renaud, this is freaky and inappropriate even by my standards!” Bro objected. “Why the fuck would you－?”

And then Renaud plucked out a third bag and dropped it on his desk. He dropped the finally empty cooler, crossed his arms, and awaited Bro’s next response with an unamused glare.

There, on Bro’s desk, was a third lung, attributed to Cronus Ampora. Bro swore loudly and pulled up the evidence map on his tablet. Sure enough, three lungs had been found in the area of the murder and absolutely no one had noticed, since each had been found separately. There were also two livers and a total of thirteen fingers.

He was already barking out orders before he was on his feet. “Order DNA tests on every single scrap of meat and bone and have them compared to the head. We need to reorganize the K9 units, maybe call in some extra, and re-sweep the area for more evidence. And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PUT THOSE BACK WHERE YOU GOT THEM!”


End file.
